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  Slashdot - Oracle's Plan to Keep Java Developers from Leaving for Rust and Kotlin
ZDNet reports: Oracle has released version 15 of Java, the language created 25 years ago by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems, which Oracle snapped up in 2009 for about $7.4bn to gain what it said was the "most important software Oracle has ever acquired". Java 15, or Oracle Java Development Kit (JDK) 15, brings the Edwards-Curve digital signature algorithm, hidden classes, and former preview features that have been finalized, including text blocks, and the Z Garbage Collector, while the sealed-classes feature arrives and pattern matching and records emerge as a second preview... In July, Java fell out of RedMonk's top two positions for the first time since 2012 and now resides behind JavaScript and Python in terms of popularity. Tiobe in September ranked Java in second position, behind C and ahead of Python.... But Java is still hugely popular and widely used in the enterprise, according to Oracle, which notes it is used by over 69% of full-time developers worldwide... It counts Arm, Amazon, IBM, Intel, NTT Data, Red Hat, SAP and Tencent among its list of notable contributors to JDK 15. Oracle also gave a special mention to Microsoft and cloud system monitoring service DataDog for fixes... As part of Java's 25th anniversary, Oracle commissioned analyst firm Omdia to assess its six-month release strategy for Java and whether it would be enough to keep millions of Java developers away from memory-safe alternatives such as Kotlin, the language Google has endorsed for Android development, and Rust, a system programming language that was created at Mozilla. "In Omdia's opinion, the work Oracle began a few years ago in moving to a six-month update cycle and introducing a new level of modularity, puts the vendor in good stead with its constituency of approximately 12 million developers," Oracle said in its report on Omdia's analysis. "However, Oracle and the Java programming language need an ongoing series of innovative, must-have, and 'delightful' features that make the language even more user friendly and cloud capable. These will keep existing Java developers happy while steering potential Java developers away from newer languages like Rust and Kotlin."

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Le 2020-09-20


  Slashdot - Microsoft Submits Linux Kernel Patches to Make Linux Run as Root Partition on Hyper-V
"Microsoft has submitted a series of patches to Linux kernel developers," reports ZDNet, "requesting that Linux run as the root partition on the Hyper-V, its hypervisor software for running Windows and non-Windows instances on hardware." Microsoft "wants to create a complete virtualization stack with Linux and Microsoft Hypervisor", according to Microsoft principle software engineer Wei Liu. Liu has proposed an RFC or request for comment that for now merely implements what are only the "absolutely necessary components to get things running... There will be a subsequent patch series to provide a device node (/dev/mshv) such that userspace programs can create and run virtual machines. We've also ported Cloud Hypervisor over and have been able to boot a Linux guest with Virtio devices since late July." Cloud Hypervisor is an experimental open-source hypervisor implementation from Intel written in the Rust programming language. It's a virtual-machine monitor that runs on top of KVM, the Kernel-based Virtual Machine hypervisor in the Linux kernel that's designed for cloud workloads... Liu points out three more changes beyond amendments to the Hyper-V Top-Level Functional Specification. For example, Microsoft wants Linux to set up existing Hyper-V facilities differently. It also wants Linux kernel developers to change the kernel's behavior when accessing hardware memory in a way that affects driver access to the GPU and CPU that's being managed by an operating system memory manager. It's this issue that Microsoft engineers are least confident about and are asking for Linux developer support, according to Liu.... As Microsoft's executive VP of the cloud and enterprise group, Scott Guthrie, told ZDNet last year, Microsoft's shift to Linux and open source started over a decade ago when it open-sourced ASP.NET. "We recognized open source is something that every developer can benefit from. It's not nice, it's essential. It's not just code, it's community," explained Guthrie.

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Le 2020-09-20


  Slashdot - European Spacecraft Flying Past Venus Will Now Look for Signs of Life
"Earlier this week, scientists announced the discovery of phosphine on Venus, a potential signature of life. Now, in an amazing coincidence, a European and Japanese spacecraft is about to fly past the planet — and could confirm the discovery," writes Forbes. Slashdot reader Iwastheone shares their report: BepiColombo, launched in 2018, is on its way to enter orbit around Mercury, the innermost planet of the Solar System. But to achieve that it plans to use two flybys of Venus to slow itself down, one on October 15, 2020, and another on August 10, 2021. The teams running the spacecraft already had plans to observe Venus during the flyby. But now, based on this detection of phosphine from telescopes on Earth, they are now planning to use both of these flybys to look for phosphine using an instrument on the spacecraft... As this first flyby is only weeks away, however, the observation campaign of the spacecraft is already set in stone, making the chance of a discovery slim. More promising is the second flyby next year, which will not only give the team more time to prepare, but also approach just 550 kilometers from Venus... If a detection can be made, it would provide independent verification of the presence of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. And for future missions planning to visit the planet, which alongside Rocket Lab's mission includes potential spacecraft from NASA, India, Russia, and Europe, that could be vital information.

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Le 2020-09-20


  Slashdot - Where's the Yelp For Open-source Tools?
Esther Schindler (Slashdot reader #16,185), shares some thoughts from long-time tech reporter Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: We'd like an easy way to judge open-source programs. It can be done. But easily? That's another matter... Plenty of people have created systems to collect, judge, and evaluate open-source projects, including information about a project's popularity, reliability, and activity. But each of those review sites — and their methodologies — have flaws. The article looks at a variety of attempts, including freshmeat.net; Eric Raymond's attempt to revive Freecode; GitHub's star (which Docker's co-founder calls a "bullshit metric"); Synopsys's Black Duck Open Hub (formerly Ohloh); and even Google Trends. But it wraps up by pointing out that Brian Profitt, Red Hat's Open Source Program Office (OSPO) manager, is working with others on "Project CHAOSS," a new Linux Foundation project to make it easy to evaluate open-source projects. This pulled together Grimoirelab and similar programs, such as Augur and Red Hat's own Prospector... Its metrics include what kinds of contributions are being made; when the contributions are made; and who's making the contributions. All of which are vital to understanding the overall health of a project. CHAOSS is still a work in progress. Its official release is scheduled for February 2021... Ultimately, this data will be available to all, from end users to the project leads. "In fact, I hope this happens a lot, because we can refine our models more quickly," says Profitt.

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Le 2020-09-20


  Slashdot - US Spy Plane Impersonates A Malaysian Aircraft
Popular Mechanics reports: A U.S. Air Force aircraft electronically impersonated a Malaysian plane while flying over the South China Sea this week. The RC-135W Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft flew off China's Hainan island on Tuesday, coming within 55 miles of the Chinese mainland. The caper was outed on Twitter by a think tank operated by the Chinese government, which provided enough details for independent verification. The plane's International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Mode-S number, a 24-bit identifier assigned to all aircraft and broadcast by onboard transponder, was AE01CE. The Mode S system provides big-picture situational awareness and improves aviation safety. At some point, the plane's Mode-S number suddenly changed, from AE01CE to 750548. That's the ICAO number for an unknown Malaysian aircraft... The RC-135W Rivet Joint is a converted Boeing 707 jetliner designed to collect electronic intelligence for later analysis... It's not clear why the RC-135W flew where it did. The flight probably coincided with Chinese military exercises, likely air or naval, or even a missile test. It's also worth pointing out that China's nuclear ballistic missile submarine force is based at Yulin on Hainan Island. It's also not clear why the RC-135W engaged in the deception. Steffan Watkins, a Canadian open source intelligence researcher, tells Popular Mechanics. "If the reconnaissance is happening outside sovereign airspace, there is no pressing need to engage in that sort of deception. It's perfectly legal, and done in plain sight off the coast of Russia, Syria, and Crimea all the time — literally, every day there are RC-135s off the coast of Russia, with their transponders on, and broadcasting exactly who they are. I can't explain the difference with China. Why the difference in emissions posture and obfuscation....?" The announcement is likely a warning to the Pentagon that the Chinese military sees through the deception, and that it's watching the watchers.

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Le 2020-09-20


  Slashdot - At Least 10 Amazon Employees Took Bribes from Sellers, Indictment Alleges
CBS News reports: Six people allegedly conspired to bribe Amazon employees and contractors in order to gain a competitive advantage on the retailer's marketplace, federal prosecutors announced Friday. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, those charged posed as consultants and worked with third-party sellers whose products had previously been removed from Amazon Marketplace get the items back on the platform. The six then paid a total of more than $100,000 in bribes to least 10 Amazon employees in exchange for their restoring the banned products or services, the indictment alleges. The products included household goods, consumer electronics and dietary supplements, prosecutors said. "The ultimate victim from this criminal conduct is the buying public, who get inferior or even dangerous goods that should have been removed from the marketplace," U.S. Attorney Brian Moran said in a statement. "As the world moves increasingly to online commerce, we must ensure that the marketplace is not corrupted with unfair advantages obtained by bribes and kickbacks...." The six accused face up to five years in prison for commercial bribery and up to 20 years for wire fraud. One of the six actually worked for Amazon at the beginning of the scheme, according to the article, which notes that their tactics included temporarily suspending the accounts of competitors. One FBI agent in Seattle tells CBS, "What's equally concerning is that, not only did they attempt to increase sales of their own products, but they sought to damage and discredit their competitors."

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Le 2020-09-20


  Slashdot - New Reality Show's Prize? 10 Days on the International Space Station
CNN reports: A planned reality show will seek to give the winner of its on-air competition "the greatest prize ever given out on Earth" — a 10-day stay on the International Space Station... The production company's press release said that the team is "now looking for global brand and primary distribution partners." Space Hero is planning to open the application process for the show in the first half of 2021 before broadcasting begins in 2022, a spokesperson said via email Friday... Space Hero, which is headed by a former News Corp executive named Marty Pompadur, said it is working with Texas-based startup Axiom Space to coordinate the trip into orbit. Axiom was co-founded and led by Michael Suffredini, who led NASA's International Space Station Program from 2005 to 2015. The company plans to serve as a go-between for NASA, launch providers such as SpaceX and Boeing, and any private-sector individuals interested in booking rides to space for tourism, entertainment or other business purposes. Axiom has also said it can provide all the training necessary to prepare individuals for a trip to the ISS... Private citizens have visited the space station before: A company called Space Adventures previously organized eight trips to the International Space Station for ultra-wealthy travelers between 2001 and 2009 using Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Allowing tourists and other private citizens to make use of the space station — via SpaceX's or Boeing's new spacecraft — is part of NASA's goal of commercializing outer space. CNN notes that Axiom is also handling the training and coordination for that Tom Cruise movie that's going to be filmed in space.

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Le 2020-09-20


  Slashdot - 'At This Point, 5G is a Bad Joke'
An anonymous reader shared this skeptical opinion piece from Computerworld: Let's start with the name itself. There is no single "5G." There are, in fact, three different varieties, with very different kinds of performance... But, what most people want, what most people lust for is 1Gbps speeds with less than 10 milliseconds of latency... [T]o get that kind of speed you must have mmWave 5G — and it comes with a lot of caveats. First, it has a range, at best, of 150 meters. If you're driving, that means, until 5G base stations are everywhere, you're going to be losing your high-speed signal a lot. Practically speaking, for the next few years, if you're on the move, you're not going to be seeing high-speed 5G. And, even if you are in range of a 5G base station, anything — and I mean anything — can block its high-frequency signal. Window glass, for instance, can stop it dead. So, you could have a 5G transceiver literally on your street corner and not be able to get a good signal. How bad is this? NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top mobile phone service provider, is working on a new kind of window glass, just so their mmWave 5G will work. I don't know about you, but I don't want to shell out a few grand to replace my windows just to get my phone to work. Let's say, though, that you've got a 5G phone and you're sure you can get 5G service — what kind of performance can you really expect? According to Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler, you can expect to see a "diddly squat" 5G performance... ["roughly the same as on 4G LTE," while some places "actually have been slower."] It wasn't just him, since he lives in that technology backwater known as the San Francisco bay area. He checked with several national firms tracking 5G performance. They found that all three major U.S. telecom networks' 5G isn't that much faster than 4G. Indeed, OpenSignal reports that U.S. 5G users saw an average speed of 33.4Mbps. Better than 4G, yes, but not "Wow! This is great!" speeds most people seem to be dreaming of. It's also, I might add, much worse than any other country using 5G, with the exception of the United Kingdom.

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Le 2020-09-20


  Slashdot - Bill Gates On the Difference Between Elon Musk and Steve Jobs
In an interview with Bloomberg, Bill Gates was asked whether his contemporary Elon Musk could be considered the "next Steve Jobs," due to the advancements his companies Tesla and SpaceX have made in electric cars and reusable rockets, respectively. CNBC reports: "If you know people personally, that kind of gross oversimplification seems strange," Gates told Bloomberg in the interview published Thursday. There are some key differences between the way Musk and Jobs operate, Gates said. "Elon's more of a hands-on engineer. Steve was a genius at design and picking people and marketing," Gates said. "You wouldn't walk into a room and confuse them with each other." [...] As for Jobs, he "was such a wizard at over-motivating people ... I could see him casting the spells, and then I would look at people and see them mesmerized," Gates told podcast host Dax Shepard Aug. 20. Musk and Gates also have their differences. CNBC adds: In August, Gates wrote a blog post about electric vehicles, saying that they will "never be a practical solution" for replacing trucks and long-haul vehicles. Musk responded to Gates' comments on Twitter Sept. 11, saying that "he has no clue" about electric trucks. (Gates said in the Bloomberg interview that Musk's electric car "is a huge contribution to the climate change effort," that Tesla "did it with quality" and that "other car companies, seeing his success, will come [into the market].") [...] Of course, Gates own reputation has evolved. In the early Microsoft days, Gates was known for setting high standards for the company and being very tough on his team. "I certainly wasn't a sweetheart when I ran Microsoft," he said on Shepard's podcast.

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Le 2020-09-19


  Slashdot - Tesla Wins Lawsuit Against Whistleblower Accused of Hacks
An anonymous reader writes: The US District Court of Nevada awarded Tesla a win in its lawsuit against a former employee, filed two years ago. You may recall CEO Elon Musk referred to this incident in a previously leaked email calling on employees to be "extremely vigilant." Martin Tripp, who worked at the company's Nevada Gigafactory, was accused of hacking the automaker and supplying sensitive information to unnamed third parties. Reuters reported Friday the court ruled in Tesla's favor and dismissed Tripp's motion to file another reply to the court. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but according to Reuters, the court will grant Tesla's motion to seal the case. Tripp originally entered the spotlight two years ago after seeking whistleblower protections and accusing Tesla of "some really scary things." He told The Washington Post he was the individual who provided information to the media and accused Tesla of building Model 3 sedans with punctured batteries. Tesla, in turn, accused Tripp of making false claims to the media. Tripp also denied any allegations he hacked Tesla, saying, "I don't have the patience for coding." The automaker previously named Tripp as a disgruntled employee angry after not receiving a promotion and accused him of aiding the theft of confidential photos and videos documenting Tesla's manufacturing process.

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Le 2020-09-19


  Slashdot - Lord of the Rings Special Effects Company 'Weta Digital' Launches Inquiry Into Toxic Workplace Claims
AmiMoJo shares a report from The Guardian: Weta Digital, the special effects company behind the orcs, dragons and battle scenes of the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, has launched an independent investigation into allegations of a toxic work culture including sexism, bullying and pornography being shared on its intranet. The investigation was ordered by the company's majority owners, who include the director Peter Jackson, his wife, Fran Welsh, and screenwriter Phillipa Boyens. It followed a months-long investigation by local television station TVNZ that found complaints had been ignored by senior management at Weta Digital, and long-standing issues raised by staff had been covered up. "The world's most beautiful toxic waste dump," is how one former employee described the award-winning company. Allegations from former staffers include sexism, bullying, and harassment, as well as "pornographic mailing lists,'" hosted on Weta Digital's intranet, in addition to staff openly viewing pornography in the studio. The pornography mailing lists are alleged to have existed from at least 2002 to 2015, when they were shut down. "There was a tradition at the time called Porn Friday. Every Friday staff members would email round porn images to the whole team," a female former Weta employee told TVNZ. "The first Friday I worked there I was so surprised, intimidated and uncomfortable. You could opt out of receiving them, which I did. "But there were still conversations amongst the team in my office every Friday about what images were sent round." Another alleged that pornography was openly shared and watched in Weta offices. There were also allegations of sexual overtures and in some cases harassment. It was also alleged that some chose not to complain because the company is a world leader in the special effects industry, and those who experienced issues feared being blacklisted.

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Le 2020-09-19


  Slashdot - CEO of Cyber Fraud Startup NS8 Arrested By FBI, Facing Fraud Charges
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: The CEO of a startup that sold fraud prevention software is facing fraud charges after he was arrested Thursday by the FBI in Las Vegas. Adam Rogas, who abruptly resigned from NS8 earlier this month, is accused of misleading investors who poured in $123 million to his company earlier this year, a deal in which he allegedly pocketed more than $17 million. "Adam Rogas was the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse," acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a press statement. "While raising over $100 million from investors for his fraud prevention company, Rogas himself allegedly was engaging in a brazen fraud." NS8 launched in 2016 to provide online fraud detection and prevention software for small businesses. More than 200 NS8 employees were laid off last week after executives told them the company was under investigation by the SEC for fraud. The news was startling for many, considering the company had announced a $123 million Series A funding round in June, led by global VC firm Lightspeed Venture Partners. In a statement, NS8 said that its board "has learned that much of the company's revenue and customer information had been fabricated by Mr. Rogas." The company added that no other employees or stakeholders had been charged and that it is cooperating with federal investigators. In its complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, the Justice Department alleged that from January 2019 to February 2020, between 40% and 95% of NS8's assets were made up. During that period, the agency alleged, Rogas presented doctored bank statements to reflect over $40 million in fictitious revenue. Charges by the Justice Department carry penalties up to 20 years in prison. Rogas is expected to face a judge in Nevada on Friday.

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Le 2020-09-19


  Slashdot - Computing Pioneers Endorse Biden, Citing Trump Immigration Crackdown
Two dozen award-winning computer scientists, in a rebuke of President Trump's immigration policies, said on Friday that they were endorsing Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November's presidential election. From a report: The scientists, including John Hennessy, the executive chairman of Google's parent company, Alphabet, are all winners of the Turing Award, which is often called the Nobel Prize of computing. In a group interview, four of the scientists said the Trump administration's restrictive immigration rules were a threat to computer research in the United States and could do long-term damage to the tech industry, which for decades has been one of the country's economic engines. "The most brilliant people in the world want to come here and be grad students, but now they are being discouraged from coming here, and many are going elsewhere," said one of the scientists who organized the endorsement, David Patterson, a Google distinguished engineer and former professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The Turing winners are the latest members of the scientific community to find their political voice as the election nears. The research journal Scientific American also endorsed Mr. Biden this week, citing, among other criticisms, Mr. Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic and his skepticism of climate change. It was the first time in its 175 years that the publication endorsed a presidential candidate. The Turing winners' endorsement -- also a first for them -- was made against the backdrop of the Trump administration's increasingly antagonistic relationship with the tech industry. Several federal agencies are investigating the business practices of tech's biggest companies, and the Justice Department could bring an antitrust case against Google as soon as this month.

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Le 2020-09-19


  Slashdot - Facebook Issues New Rules On Internal Employee Communication
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday outlined to employees a new set of principles to guide debates and conversations within Workplace, the company's internal social network. Zuckerberg outlined the changes to address "a lot of very tense conversations happening out in the world," according to company spokesman Joe Osborne. The new principles follow a set of similar changes at Google, which is increasing the moderation of its internal message boards, CNBC reported earlier this week. "We deeply value expression and open discussion. What we've heard from our employees is that they want the option to join debates on social and political issues rather than see them unexpectedly in their work feed," Osborne said in a statement. "We're updating our employee policies and work tools to ensure our culture remains respectful and inclusive." Under the new set of principles, Zuckerberg said, Facebook will ensure all employees feel supported at work, especially the company's Black community, by strengthening the company's harassment policy with more protections for underrepresented employees. The company will also be more specific about which parts of Workplace can be used to discuss social and political issues. This change will be so that employees do not have to confront social issues during their day-to-day work. Facebook's new principles also ask that employees communicate with professionalism and continue to debate about the company's work but do so in a respectful manner.

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Le 2020-09-19


  Slashdot - Sony Makes It Official: PlayStation 5 Won't Natively Support PS1, PS2, PS3
In a Wednesday interview, Sony Interactive Entertainment chief Jim Ryan confirmed that the upcoming PlayStation 5 console won't natively support PS1, PS2, or PS3 games. Ars Technica reports: Ryan explained that "PS5-specific engineering" meant the design team was mostly focused on "the simultaneous use of high-speed SSDs and the new DualSense controller." This prevented Sony from delivering compatibility with older consoles, Ryan told Famitsu, even though he made clear that Sony wanted to support PlayStation 4's "100 million players" by developing compatibility with "99%" of PS4 games, since "we thought that they would like to play PS4 titles on the PS5, as well." This announcement doesn't clarify whether PS1 games purchased for use on PS4 will transfer to PS5. It also doesn't mention the existing ability for players to stream older-generation games to PS4 from the PlayStation Now cloud-subscription service or whether we should expect that functionality to seamlessly transfer to PS5 in November. [...] Wednesday's dump of PlayStation 5 news did not go into further detail about additional boosts to PS4 games as played on the upcoming console. Instead, we learned that some major PlayStation 5 games, particularly Horizon: Forbidden West and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, will launch simultaneously on PS5 and PS4. This appears to run somewhat counter to Sony's recent comments about maintaining "generations" instead of supporting an Xbox-style "forward-compatible" plan for its biggest games.

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Le 2020-09-19


  Slashdot - Is Apple One a Bargain? It's Complicated
Apple One, Apple's long-awaited services bundle, has arrived and The Verge's Chaim Gartenberg has crunched the numbers to see which subscription package, if any, is worth it. From the report: Let's start with the Apple One Individual plan. Offering a single Apple Music plan ($9.99 per month), a 50GB iCloud storage bucket ($0.99 per month), and access to Apple Arcade ($4.99 per month) and Apple TV Plus ($4.99 per month) for $14.99, it seems like it saves you money. But unless you're interested in subscribing to Apple Music and either Apple Arcade or Apple TV Plus, you're probably better off just saving the $4 and sticking with an $11 Apple Music and iCloud combo. (As a side note, Apple does grant everyone in your family plan access to Apple Arcade and Apple TV Plus, even if you subscribe to it through the "Individual plan," which may impact your calculus.) It's a similar story with the Family plan: a regular family plan for Apple Music costs $14.99 per month, and a 200GB iCloud bucket (which can already be shared across a whole family) is $2.99. Once again, if you want either Apple Arcade or Apple TV Plus on top of that, the Apple One bundle effectively gets you both of those services for the price of one, but if all you want is Apple Music and iCloud storage, Apple One doesn't really offer any benefits. The Apple One Premier plan is a slightly different story, though. At $29.99 per month, it's the most expensive of the plans. Comparing it to the unbundled costs, an Apple Music family plan is once again $14.99, while a 2TB iCloud plan is $9.99. If you were already paying for both of those plans -- which isn't unreasonable for a family that's heavily invested in Apple products -- then you're only looking at a $5 per month increase to gain access to Arcade along with the additions of News Plus and Fitness Plus (which, at $9.99 per month each, are among Apple's priciest subscriptions). "But in most cases, Apple One only makes sense if you're already subscribing to Apple's most in-demand services: iCloud storage, which is essential for backing up most iPhones given Apple's increasingly absurd (and stingy) 5GB allowance for new devices, and Apple Music," writes Gartenberg in closing. "And at the end of the day, Apple One doesn't make subscribing to those two key services dramatically cheaper -- it just provides a discount for subscribing to Apple's less popular services. It's a good discount, mind you, but one that still results in most customers paying more than they are right now."

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Le 2020-09-18


  Slashdot - WeChat Users Won't Be Targeted By Trump's Order, US Says
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: WeChat users who download the Chinese app for personal or business communications won't be targeted by President Donald Trump's executive order that will prohibit using the app for some transactions, the U.S. said. The U.S. Commerce Department plans to clarify by Sept. 20 which transactions will be prohibited. But it doesn't intend to define "the relevant transactions in such a way that would impose criminal or civil liability on such users," according to a government filing Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco. The U.S. WeChat Users Alliance is seeking a preliminary injunction against Trump's executive order. A hearing on the request is scheduled for Thursday. According to the WeChat users group, Trump's Aug. 6 order would sunder the primary and often exclusive channel many U.S. residents use to communicate with family and friends in both China and the U.S. WeChat is also used to run businesses and non-profit organizations, practice religion and as a source news. WeChat is so integral to Chinese and Chinese Americans' lives that a ban would be like "losing a limb" for some users, the group claims. "Having first failed to articulate any actual national security concern, the administration's latest 'assurances' that users can keep using WeChat, and exchange their personal and business information, only further illustrates the hollowness and pre-textual nature of defendants' 'national security' rationales," the group said in a court filing.

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Le 2020-09-18


  Slashdot - A Utah Company Claims It Invented Contact Tracing Tech
In the fight against Covid-19, contact tracing apps have so far largely been disappointments -- in the United States, at least. Proposed in the spring as a way to help quickly stifle viral outbreaks by tracking down potential exposures using smartphones, they were stunted by technical glitches, concerns over privacy, and the US's fragmented, haphazard pandemic response. Now, they may become mired in a fight over patents. From a report: The challenge comes from Blyncsy, a Salt Lake City-based maker of software that helps cities gather and analyze mobility data. In recent weeks, the company has sent claims seeking the equivalent of $1 per resident to states that have released or plan to release contact tracing apps, including Pennsylvania, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Virginia. The company holds three patents related to contact tracing. One of them, granted in February 2019, for "tracking proximity relationships and uses thereof," describes methods of tracking the spread of "contagion" using technology such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular signals. Apps launched by public health agencies during the Covid-19 pandemic infringe upon it, the company says. In April, Blyncsy launched a portal for others to request a license for its technology and submit plans for a privacy review. That was shortly after Google and Apple jointly announced an effort to get contact tracing technology in the hands of state and national governments, using Bluetooth features on the companies' smartphones. Blyncsy did not get any takers. "State governments have taken it upon themselves to roll out a solution in their name in which they're using our property without compensation," says Blyncsy CEO Mark Pittman. He describes the current crop of contact tracing apps as "fly-by-night" efforts and says his patent fight is driven by concerns about their privacy and effectiveness, not an attempt to profit.

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Le 2020-09-18


  Slashdot - Piratebay.Org Sold For $50,000 At Auction, ThePiratebay.com Up Next
Several Pirate Bay-related domains become available again this month after their owner failed to renew the registration. Yesterday, Piratebay.org was sold in a Dropcatch auction for $50,000 and ThePiratebay.com will follow soon. Both domains were previously registered to the official Pirate Bay site. TorrentFreak reports: Over the years the Pirate Bay team had many 'backup' domains available, just in case something happened. That included various exotic TLDs but the site also owned Piratebay.org and ThePiratebay.com. We use the past tense because both domains expired recently. The domains listed Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij as the registrant and until recently the same Swedish address was listed in Whois data. For reasons unknown, however, the registrant let both Piratebay.org and ThePiratebay.com expire. This isn't a problem for the torrent site really. The domains were never used as the site's main address. ThePiratebay.com did forward to the original .org domain at one point, but that's about it. None of this means that the domains are not valuable to outsiders though. This became apparent in an auction yesterday, where Piratebay.org (without the the) was sold for $50,000 to a bidder named 'clvrfls.' The bid below ended up being the winning one. The Piratebay.org domain failed to renew earlier this month after which the professional 'drop catch' service Dropcatch.com scooped it up. They auctioned the domain off, which is a common practice, and it proved quite lucrative. What the new owner will do with the domain is unclear. It has a substantial number of backlinks and there will be plenty of type-in traffic as well. [...] ThePiratebay.com is expected to drop later this week and is listed at a pending delete auction, and ThePiratebay.net and Piratebay.net will drop in a few days as well.

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Le 2020-09-17


  Slashdot - Daimler Shows Off Long-Range Hydrogen Semi, New Battery Truck
Daimler, which has worked on hydrogen technology for decades, is developing a fuel-cell semi with range of up to 600 miles per fueling and next-generation battery trucks amid intensifying competition to curb diesel and carbon exhaust from heavy-duty vehicles. Forbes reports: The German auto giant's truck unit showed off the Mercedes-Benz GenH2, a concept truck designed for long haul runs that will be tested by customers in 2023, at an event in Berlin Tuesday outlining steps it's taking to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Volume production of GenH2s starts in the second half of the 2020s. The company also debuted its Mercedes-Benz eActros LongHaul, a battery-powered truck for short- and medium-range routes goes about 300 miles (500 kilometers) between charges. eActros production starts in 2024. Both trucks share Daimler's new ePowetrain modular platform to help hold costs down. They'll be available initially in Europe, though versions for North America and Japan will arrive around the same time, the company said. [...] A unique twist with Daimler's GenH2 truck is that the system relies on liquid hydrogen, rather than highly compressed hydrogen gas, the current standard. The benefit is that liquid hydrogen is more energy dense and uses tanks that are much lighter than those required for gaseous fuel, Daimler said. "This gives the trucks a larger cargo space and higher payload weight," while also improving range, it said. The combination of hydrogen and battery vehicles "enables us to offer our customers the best vehicle options, depending on the application," Daimler Chairman Martin Daum said at the event. "Battery power will be rather used for lower cargo weights and for shorter distances. Fuel-cell power will tend to be the preferred option for heavier loads and longer distances."

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Le 2020-09-17


  Slashdot - Oculus Quest 2 Offers a More Powerful Standalone VR Headset For $299
Facebook has unveiled the Oculus Quest 2, including its release date and price, and it promises to be a big leap over the original. Android Authority reports: The second-generation standalone, Android-powered virtual reality headset will be available on October 13 starting at $299 for a model with 64GB of storage, a full $100 below the price of the first Quest. Pre-orders are open now. The Oculus Quest 2 is much more powerful than its predecessor, with a Snapdragon XR2 chip and 6GB of RAM instead of the aging Snapdragon 835 and 4GB of RAM. That should lead to more advanced games and an overall smoother VR experience, although you'll need to wait for titles that take full advantage of the added power. You may notice the improved display technology right away, however. The Quest 2 boasts the company's sharpest visuals yet, with a single LCD screen providing 1,832 x 1,920 resolution for each eye -- 50% more pixels than the 1,400 x 1,600 displays in the first Quest. It's the highest-resolution Oculus headset to date. The Oculus Quest 2 also supports much more natural-feeling 90Hz refresh rates, although it won't be available upon release. You'll have to settle for 72Hz at first. It could also be the most comfortable. The Quest 2 is both smaller and 10% lighter than before, with a soft head strap that should make for an easier fit. The Touch controllers are improved, too, with upgraded haptic feedback, better hand tracking, and a thumb rest. Add-ons will help, for that matter. A Fit Pack will adapt to different-sized heads, while a $49 Elite Strap and a $129 Elite Strap with Battery Pack offer both more comfort and longer VR sessions.

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Le 2020-09-17


  Slashdot - Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden For Its First Presidential Endorsement In 175 Years
goombah99 shares a report from The Washington Post: Four years ago, the magazine flagged Donald Trump's disdain for science as "frightening" but did not go so far as to endorse his rival, Hillary Clinton. This year, its editors came to a different conclusion. "A 175-year tradition is not something you break lightly," editor in chief, Laura Helmuth told The Washington Post on Tuesday. "We'd love to stay out of politics, but this president has been so anti-science that we can't ignore it." In a nod to Trump's embrace of anti-science conspiracy theories, Scientific American editors compared the people each candidate turns to for expertise and insight. Biden's panel of public health advisers "does not include physicians who believe in aliens and debunked virus therapies, one of whom Trump has called 'very respected' and 'spectacular,'" the editors write. The editor in chief of Science Magazine, the "apex predator of academic publishing," according to Wired, also denounced Trump but stopped short of endorsing presidential candidate Joe Biden. goombah99 writes: "This may be the most shameful moment in the history of U.S. science policy," writes H. Holden Thorp, a chemist and longtime university administrator. The editorial's key point is that it was negligence but more like malice. "As he was playing down the virus to the public, Trump was not confused or inadequately briefed: He flat-out lied, repeatedly, about science to the American people. These lies demoralized the scientific community and cost countless lives in the United States." This follows on an august issue's lament over the dangerous policies of the unqualified presidential coronavirus advisor Scott Atlas: "Although Atlas may be capable of neurological imaging, he's not an expert in infectious diseases or public health -- and it shows. He's spreading scientific misinformation in a clear attempt to placate the president and push his narrative that COVID-19 is not an emergency." Thorp concludes his article in this prestige journal with a searing indictment "Trump was not clueless, and he was not ignoring the briefings. Listen to his own words. Trump lied, plain and simple."

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Le 2020-09-17


  Slashdot - USB-C Was Supposed To Simplify Our Lives. Instead, It's a Total Mess.
USB-C is near-ubiquitous: Almost every modern laptop and smartphone has at least one USB-C port, with the exception of the iPhone, which still uses Apple's proprietary Lightning port. For all its improvements, USB-C has become a mess of tangled standards -- a nightmare for consumers to navigate despite the initial promise of simplicity. From a report: Anyone going all-in on USB-C will run into problems with an optional standard called Power Delivery. The standard allows devices to charge at a much higher wattage relative to older connectors, therefore allowing them to charge faster. But it requires the right combination of charger, cables, and device to actually achieve this. If you buy a USB-C charger that doesn't support Power Delivery and try to use it with a Microsoft Surface, for example, the laptop will complain that it's "not charging" despite receiving some power. Fixing this requires figuring out whether or not it's the cable or wall charger that doesn't support Power Delivery, and replacing it with something that does support it. There would be no way for a layperson to hold two USB-C chargers and know the difference between one that supports Power Delivery and one that doesn't. Furthering the confusion, some devices actually can't be charged with chargers supporting Power Delivery, despite sporting a USB-C port -- because they weren't designed to negotiate the higher wattage being delivered by the Power Delivery standard. A pair of cheap Anker headphones I own, for example, refuse to charge when plugged into a MacBook charger. Other devices, like the Nintendo Switch, only partially support the standard, and some unsupported chargers have bricked devices, reportedly due to the Switch's maximum voltage being exceeded. Then there's DisplayPort and Thunderbolt, another set of standards supported by some USB-C devices. DisplayPort allows the use of an external display, such as a 4K monitor, but only supports one at a time at full resolution. Thunderbolt, yet another optional standard, is a much faster layer on top of USB-C that allows additional possibilities, like the use of multiple displays daisy-chained from a single port, or the use of an external graphics card. It uses the exact same connector, but can be identified with an additional "lightning" symbol when supported.

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Le 2020-09-17


  Slashdot - Why Goodreads is Bad For Books
After years of complaints from users, Goodreads' reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end. From a report: Goodreads started off the way you might think: two avid readers, in the mid-Noughties, wanting to build space online for people to track, share, and talk about books they were reading. Husband and wife Otis and Elizabeth Chandler say they initially launched the platform in 2007 to get recommendations from their literary friends. But it was something many others wanted, too: by 2013, the site had swelled to 15 million users. That year Goodreads it was bought by Amazon, an acquisition Wired magazine called "quaint", given Amazon's roots in bookselling before it became the store that sold everything. Even then, many Goodreads users already felt stung by the tech giant which had, a year earlier, changed the terms of its huge books dataset (which Goodreads used to identify titles). Goodreads had been forced to move to a different data source, called Ingram; the move caused users to lose large amounts of their reading records.Z Most stuck with it, however -- not because of the platform itself, but because of its community. Writing in the Atlantic in 2012, Sarah Fay called Goodreads "Facebook with books," and argued that "if enough contributors set the bar high with creative, funny, and smart reviews it might become a force of its own." While newspapers mourned the decline of reading and literature, Goodreads showed that a large and growing number of people still had a real passion for books and bookshops. Thirteen years after the first Kindle was sold, printed books have more than ten times the market share of ebooks, but talking about books happens much more online. But now, for many, the utopia Goodreads was founded to create has become closer to purgatory. Goodreads today looks and works much as it did when it was launched. The design is like a teenager's 2005 Myspace page: cluttered, random and unintuitive. Books fail to appear when searched for, messages fail to send, and users are flooded with updates in their timelines that have nothing to do with the books they want to read or have read. Many now use it purely to track their reading, rather than get recommendations or build a community. "It should be my favourite platform," one user told me, "but it's completely useless."

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Le 2020-09-17


  Slashdot - Congressional Inquiry Faults Boeing And FAA Failures For Deadly 737 Max Plane Crashes
A sweeping congressional inquiry into the development and certification of Boeing's troubled 737 Max airplane finds damning evidence of failures at both Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration that "played instrumental and causative roles" in two fatal crashes that killed a total of 346 people. From a report: The House Transportation Committee released an investigative report produced by Democratic staff on Wednesday morning. It documents what it says is "a disturbing pattern of technical miscalculations and troubling management misjudgments" by Boeing, combined with "numerous oversight lapses and accountability gaps by the FAA." Lion Air Flight 610 crashed in October 2018, and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed in March 2019, both Boeing 737 Max aircraft. "The Max crashes were not the result of a singular failure, technical mistake, or mismanaged event," the committee report says. Instead, "they were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing's engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing's management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA." The report is the latest of many investigations into the 737 Max crashes and includes little new information. But it appears to be the most comprehensive in analyzing both Boeing's and the FAA's roles in developing and certifying an ultimately flawed commercial passenger jet. House Transportation Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., says one of the most startling revelations uncovered by the investigation is that "both FAA and Boeing came to the conclusion that the certification of the Max was compliant" with FAA regulations. He calls that "mind-boggling." "The problem is it was compliant and not safe. And people died," DeFazio said, adding that it's "clear evidence that the current regulatory system is fundamentally flawed and needs to be repaired." "This is a tragedy that never should have happened," DeFazio added. "It could have been prevented and we're going to take steps in our legislation to see that it never happens again as we reform the system."

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Le 2020-09-17


  Slashdot - Apple Researching Apple Watch Bands That Can Provide Information In Braille
According to Apple Insider, Apple is researching an Apple Watch band that could contain controllable protrusions to present tactile information on the surface. From the report: Apple has famously always researched providing accessibility features in its devices, whether or not it's profitable. However, so far there has been a limit to what the Apple Watch can do -- and its bands could have no accessibility features at all. "Tactile output for wearable device," is a newly granted US patent which aims to change that. Alongside the various things Siri can say aloud since the Apple Watch Series 3, there could now be Apple-designed bands that display Braille information. While Apple wants its patent to cover any kind of electronic device possible, most of its descriptions and all of its drawings refer to the Apple Watch and to what Apple refers to as actuators. These are components that respond to a processor and cause other elements to move or rearrange. "[For example, a] wearable item comprises a flexible strap and actuators within the flexible strap," says the patent. "The actuators are configured to dynamically form protrusions along the flexible strap. The protrusions present tactilely-perceptible information." These protrusions are similar to the raised dots in Braille, but Apple says they needn't be confined to that one system. Rather than following the established patterns of whole words in Braille, the same protrusions could be configured to "also or instead be dynamically and/or selectively actuated to form [the] shapes of alphanumeric characters."

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Le 2020-09-16


  Slashdot - Europe's Top Court Says Net Neutrality Rules Bar 'Zero Rating'
The European Union's top court has handed down its first decision on the bloc's net neutrality rules -- interpreting the law as precluding the use of commercial 'zero rating' by Internet services providers. TechCrunch reports: 'Zero rating' refers to the practice of ISPs offering certain apps/services 'tariff free' by excluding their data consumption. It's controversial because it can have the effect of penalizing and/or blocking the use of non-zero-rated apps/services, which may be inaccessible while the zero rated apps/services are not -- which in turn undermines the principal of net neutrality with its promise of fair competition via an equal and level playing field for all things digital. The pan-EU net neutrality regulation came into force in 2016 amid much controversy over concerns it would undermine rather than bolster a level playing field online. So the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU)'s first ruling interpreting the regulation is an important moment for regional digital rights watchers. A Budapest court hearing two actions against Telenor, related to two of its 'zero rating' packages, made a reference to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling on how to interpret and apply Article 3(1) and (2) of the regulation -- which safeguards a number of rights for end users of Internet access services and prohibits service providers from putting in place agreements or commercial practices limiting the exercise of those rights -- and Article 3(3), which lays down a general obligation of "equal and non-discriminatory treatment of traffic." The court found that 'zero rating' agreements that combine a 'zero tariff' with measures blocking or slowing down traffic linked to the use of 'non-zero tariff' services and applications are indeed liable to limit the exercise of end users' rights within the meaning of the regulation and on a significant part of the market. It also found that no assessment of the effect of measures blocking or slowing down traffic on the exercise of end users' rights is required by the regulation, while measures applied for commercial (rather than technical) reasons must be regarded as automatically incompatible. The full CJEU judgement is available here.

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Le 2020-09-16


  Slashdot - Microsoft Submits Linux Kernel Patches For a 'Complete Virtualization Stack' With Linux and Hyper-V
Microsoft has submitted a series of patches to the Linux kernel with its aim being "to create a complete virtualization stack with Linux and Microsoft Hypervisor." The Register reports: The patches are designated "RFC" (Request for comments) and are a minimal implementation presented for discussion. The key change is that with the patched kernel, Linux will run as the Hyper-V root partition. In the Hyper-V architecture, the root partition has direct access to hardware and creates child partitions for the VMs it hosts. "Just think of it like Xen's Dom0," said Microsoft principal software engineer Wei Liu. Hyper-V's architecture is more similar to Xen than it is to KVM or to VMware's ESXi, and Liu acknowledged that "we drew inspiration from the Xen code in Linux," specifically for code handing interrupts. Until now, the Hyper-V root partition had to run Windows. Microsoft has also ported Intel's open-source Cloud Hypervisor, a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) written in Rust that normally runs on KVM, the hypervisor that is built into the Linux kernel. Cloud Hypervisor itself is currently in "very early pre-alpha stage." Even when Linux is the root partition, it will still run on top of Microsoft's hypervisor, a thin layer running with ring -1 privileges. It will no longer be necessary to run Windows on that hypervisor, though, enabling Microsoft to call the new arrangement "a complete virtualization stack with Linux."

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Le 2020-09-16


  Slashdot - Personal Information of Roughly 46,000 Veterans Exposed In VA Hack
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The Department of Veterans Affairs said Monday that roughly 46,000 veterans had their personal information, including Social Security numbers, exposed in a data breach in which "unauthorized users" gained access to an online application used for making health care payments. A preliminary review of the incident indicated that the hackers accessed the application "to change financial information and divert payments from VA by using social engineering techniques and exploiting authentication protocols," according to the department's announcement. "The Financial Services Center (FSC) determined one of its online applications was accessed by unauthorized users to divert payments to community health care providers for the- medical treatment of Veterans. The FSC took the application offline and reported the breach to VA's Privacy Office," the statement said. "To prevent any future improper access to and modification of information, system access will not be reenabled until a comprehensive security review is completed by the VA Office of Information Technology," it added. The department is taking steps to alert veterans whose information was compromised. "To protect these Veterans, the FSC is alerting the affected individuals, including the next-of-kin of those who are deceased, of the potential risk to their personal information. The department is also offering access to credit monitoring services, at no cost, to those whose social security numbers may have been compromised," Monday's statement said. "Veterans whose information was involved are advised to follow the instructions in the letter to protect their data. There is no action needed from Veterans if they did not receive an alert by mail, as their personal information was not involved in the incident," it adds.

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Le 2020-09-16


  Slashdot - A Bug In Joe Biden's Campaign App Gave Anyone Access To Millions of Voter Files
schwit1 shares a report from TechCrunch: A privacy bug in Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's official campaign app allowed anyone to look up sensitive voter information on millions of Americans, a security researcher has found. The campaign app, Vote Joe, allows Biden supporters to encourage friends and family members to vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election by uploading their phone's contact lists to see if their friends and family members are registered to vote. The app uploads and matches the user's contacts with voter data supplied from TargetSmart, a political marketing firm that claims to have files on more than 191 million Americans. When a match is found, the app displays the voter's name, age and birthday, and which recent election they voted in. This, the app says, helps users find people you know and encourage them to get involved." While much of this data can already be public, the bug made it easy for anyone to access any voter's information by using the app. The App Analyst, a mobile expert who detailed his findings on his eponymous blog, found that he could trick the app into pulling in anyone's information by creating a contact on his phone with the voter's name. The Biden campaign fixed the bug and pushed out an app update on Friday. "We were made aware about how our third-party app developer was providing additional fields of information from commercially available data that was not needed," Matt Hill, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign, told TechCrunch. "We worked with our vendor quickly to fix the issue and remove the information. We are committed to protecting the privacy of our staff, volunteers and supporters will always work with our vendors to do so."

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Le 2020-09-16


  Slashdot - Apple Introduces Redesigned iPad Air With A14 Chip, All-Screen Design, TouchID and USB-C
Apple today introduced a redesigned iPad Air that looks more like an iPad Pro, as well as an updated 8th-generation, entry-level iPad. MacRumors reports on the new iPad Air: Apple today introduced a redesigned iPad Air with slimmer bezels, paving the way for an all-screen design similar to recent iPad Pro models. In addition, the new iPad Air is the first Apple device with Touch ID built into the power button. The new iPad Air is powered by the new 5nm-based, six-core A14 Bionic chip for up to 40 percent faster performance and up to 30 percent faster graphics than the previous-generation iPad Air. The device features a fully laminated 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display with True Tone, P3 wide color support, and an anti-reflective coating. Following in the footsteps of the iPad Pro, the new iPad Air features a USB-C port instead of a Lightning connector. The device also features the same 12-megapixel rear camera used in the iPad Pro for higher-resolution photos and 4K video recording. The new iPad Air will be available starting in October on Apple.com and the Apple Store app in 30 countries and regions. Wi-Fi models will start at $599, while cellular models will start at $729, with 64GB and 256GB storage capacities available. There will be five colors to choose from, including silver, space gray, rose gold, green, and sky blue. 9to5Mac reports on the 8th-generation iPad: Apple today announced the 8th-generation iPad, featuring an A12 chip compared to the previous-generation's A10 processor. The design of the new entry-level iPad is largely the same as its predecessor. The jump from A10 to A12 means Apple's cheapest iPad will feature the Neural Engine for the first time. Apple says the A12 chip offers more than twice the performance of the top selling Windows laptop, 6x faster than the top-selling Android tablet and 6x faster than the best-selling Chromebook. The 8th-generation iPad keeps the same price as the 7th-gen: that's $329 for general sale and $299 for education.

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Le 2020-09-16


  Slashdot - New Google Fiber Plan: $100 For 2Gbps, Plus Wi-Fi 6 Router and Mesh Extender
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google Fiber will soon offer 2Gbps service for $100 a month, a package that includes a Wi-Fi 6 router and mesh extender, the Alphabet-owned ISP announced yesterday. Google fiber-to-the-home service never rolled out as far as many people hoped, but the ISP is still making improvements in cities where it does provide broadband. The new offering is double the download speed of Google Fiber's standard 1Gbps service and costs $30 more. While the new offer is 2Gbps on the download side, it will be 1Gbps for uploads. In addition to fiber-to-the-home, Google Fiber offers wireless home Internet access in some cities through its Webpass service. Even the Webpass wireless service will get the 2Gbps plan, the announcement said. Webpass' standard speeds today range from 100Mbps to 1Gbps. The 2Gbps service will initially be available to some customers through Google Fiber's Trusted Tester program next month, with plans to roll out across "most" Google Fiber and Webpass markets in 2021. The announcement didn't provide any details on the Wi-Fi 6 router and mesh extender that will be included in the $100 price. Google Fiber provides 1Gbps customers a gateway and router in a single device it calls a "Network Box." "Why 2 Gig? This year has made this need for more speed and bandwidth especially acute, as many of us are now living our entire lives -- from work to school to play -- within our homes, creating unprecedented demand for Internet capacity," the Google Fiber announcement said. Google says the 2 Gig speeds "will roll out to all of our Nashville and Huntsville customers later this year, with plans to launch the service across most of our Google Fiber and Google Fiber Webpass cities in early 2021." You can sign up here for an opportunity to be among the first to test the new speeds in your city.

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Le 2020-09-16


  Slashdot - How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled
NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work -- that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled -- all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic. NPR: The industry's awareness that recycling wouldn't keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program's earliest days, we found. "There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis," one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech. Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true. "If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment," Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry's most powerful trade groups in Washington, D.C., told NPR. In response, industry representative Steve Russell, until recently the vice president of plastics for the trade group the American Chemistry Council, said the industry has never intentionally misled the public about recycling and is committed to ensuring all plastic is recycled. [...] Here's the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can't be reused more than once or twice. On the other hand, new plastic is cheap. It's made from oil and gas, and it's almost always less expensive and of better quality to just start fresh. All of these problems have existed for decades, no matter what new recycling technology or expensive machinery has been developed. In all that time, less than 10 percent of plastic has ever been recycled. But the public has known little about these difficulties.

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Le 2020-09-16


  Slashdot - Addicted To Losing: How Casino-Like Apps Have Drained People of Millions
NBC News spoke to 21 people who said they were hooked on casino-style apps and had spent significant sums of money. The industry is almost entirely unregulated. From a report: Shellz, 37, a nurse from Houston, spends at least two hours a day with her husband playing a casino-style smartphone game called Jackpot Magic. The app offers a variety of typical casino games to play, including their favorite, called Reel Rivals, a game in which players accrue points by playing a virtual slot machine. As in a real casino, players exchange money for coins to bet. Unlike in a real casino, there is no way to win money back or earn a payout on coins. But that has not stopped Shellz and her husband from spending about $150,000 in the game in just two years. She asked to use her in-game username so her family does not find out how much money they have spent on the game. "We lie in bed next to each other, we have two tablets, two phones and a computer and all these apps spinning Reel Rivals at the same time," she said. "We normalize it with each other." Jackpot Magic is an app made by Big Fish Games of Seattle, one of the leaders in an industry of "free-to-play" social games into which some people have plowed thousands of dollars. Big Fish Games also operates a similar app, Big Fish Casino. Both are labeled as video games, which allows the company and others like it to skirt the tightly regulated U.S. gambling market. But unlike the gambling market, apps like Jackpot Magic and Big Fish Casino are under little oversight to determine whether they are fair or whether their business practices are predatory. NBC News spoke to 21 people, including Shellz and her husband, who said they were hooked on the casino-style games and had spent significant sums of money. They described feelings of helplessness and wanting to quit but found themselves addicted to the games and tempted by the company's aggressive marketing tactics. Most of the 21 players wished to remain anonymous, as they were ashamed of their addictions and did not want their loved ones to find out about their behavior. A 42-year-old Pennsylvania woman said she felt saddened that she spent $40,000 on Big Fish Casino while working as an addiction counselor. "The whole time I was working as an addiction counselor, I was addicted to gambling and with no hope of winning any money back," she said. Big Fish Games did not make anyone available for an interview, nor did the company respond to detailed questions. The company has said in previous court filings that only a fraction of the game's players actually spend money. In a response to NBC News' inquiries, the company issued a statement saying its games are not gambling and should not be regulated as such.

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Le 2020-09-16


  Slashdot - Boston Dynamics CEO Talks Profitability and the Company's Next Robots
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat, written by Emil Protalinski: Founded in 1992, Boston Dynamics is arguably the best-known robot company around, in part because its demonstration videos tend to go viral. Now it is attempting to transform from an R&D company to a robotics business, with an eye on profitability for the first time. When we interviewed Boston Dynamics founder and former CEO Marc Raibert in November 2019, we discussed the company's customers, potential applications, AI, simulation, and those viral videos. But it turns out Raibert was transitioning out of the CEO role at the time -- current CEO Robert Playter told us in an interview this month that he took the helm in November. We sat down to discuss Playter's first year as CEO; profitability; Spot, Pick, Handle, and Atlas; and the company's broader roadmap, including which robots are next. [...] In June, Boston Dynamics started selling its quadruped robot Spot in the U.S. for $74,500. Last week, the company expanded Spot sales to Canada, the EU, and the U.K. at the same price point. Playter says Boston Dynamics has sold or leased about 250 robots to date and business is accelerating. [...] Compared to big manufacturing robotic companies, 250 robots is not a lot. But Playter points out it's a big achievement "for a novel robot like Spot." Other robotic startups would love to get that sort of market validation. "We're penetrating, we're establishing a market, and people are starting to see value. We're adapting Spot to be a solution for some of the industries we're targeting," Playter said. Spot's success means the company is beating its own internal targets. "We are meeting -- actually exceeding -- some of our sales goals for Spot," Playter said. "We had ambitious goals this year, but we met our Q1 goal. We're meeting our Q2 goal. We have ambitious Q3 and Q4 goals. I think we're probably going to meet or exceed them this year. To become profitable, these products do have to become successful. They have to scale. But right now, I think we're beating plan." The company now has a roadmap to profitability. "I think we'll be profitable in about two and a half years," Playter said. "2023-2024 is when I'm projecting that we are cash positive." To hit that milestone, Boston Dynamics is simultaneously developing robots for logistics (think production, packaging, inventory, transportation, and warehousing)...

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Le 2020-09-15


  Slashdot - Hate Speech on Facebook Is Pushing Ethiopia Dangerously Close To a Genocide
Ethnic violence set off by the assassination of a popular singer has been supercharged by hate speech and incitements shared widely on the platform. From a report: Throughout his life, Ethiopian singer Hachalu Hundessa sang about love, unity, and raising the marginalized voices of his Oromo ethnic group. He had always tried to keep his work and politics separate, saying, "Art should not be subject to political pressure." But it became increasingly difficult for him to keep these two worlds apart, thanks to a politically-motivated disinformation campaign orchestrated on Facebook through a network of newly created pages and designed to demonize Hundessa. The incendiary campaign claimed Hundessa abandoned his Oromo roots in siding with Prime Minister Ahmed Abiy. Abiy, Ethiopia's first Oromo leader, has been heavily criticized by hard-line Oromo nationalists who believe he has abandoned his heritage by appeasing other ethnic groups. The impact was devastating. Hundessa was assassinated on June 29 while driving through the capital Addis Ababa. The man police charged with Hundessa's killing told prosecutors that he was working as an assassin for the Oromo Liberation Front, an armed nationalist group linked to numerous violent attacks -- and who told the shooter that Oromia would benefit from the death of one of its most famous singers. Hundessa's death at age 34 set off a wave of violence in the capital and his home region of Oromia. Hundreds of people were killed, with minorities like Christian Amharas, Christian Oromos, and Gurage people suffering the biggest losses. This bloodshed was supercharged by the almost-instant and widespread sharing of hate speech and incitement to violence on Facebook, which whipped up people's anger. Mobs destroyed and burned property. They lynched, beheaded, and dismembered their victims. The calls for violence against a variety of ethnic and religious groups happened despite the government shutting down the internet within hours of Hundessa's murder. Soon, the same people who'd been calling for genocide and attacks against specific religous or ethnic groups were openly posting photographs of burned-out cars, buildings, schools and houses, the Network Against Hate Speech, a volunteer group tracking hate speech in Ethiopia, told VICE News. These attacks reflect the volatile nature of ethnic politics in Ethiopia. Abiy's rise to power in 2018 led to a brief period of hope that Ethiopia could be unified under the first Oromo to lead the country. But that quickly evaporated, and the country has since been wracked by violence, coinciding with a rapid increase in access to the internet, where Facebook dominates. And rather than helping to unify the country, Facebook has simply amplified existing tensions on a massive scale.

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Le 2020-09-15


  Slashdot - A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation
Facebook ignored or was slow to act on evidence that fake accounts on its platform have been undermining elections and political affairs around the world, according to an explosive memo sent by a recently fired Facebook employee and obtained by BuzzFeed News. From the report: The 6,600-word memo, written by former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, is filled with concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion. In countries including India, Ukraine, Spain, Bolivia, and Ecuador she found evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying sizes to boost or hinder political candidates or outcomes, though she did not always conclude who was behind them. "In the three years I've spent at Facebook, I've found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions," wrote Zhang, who declined to talk to BuzzFeed News. Her Linkedin profile said she "worked as the data scientist for the Facebook Site Integrity fake engagement team" and dealt with "bots influencing elections and the like." "I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without oversight, and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I've lost count," she wrote. The memo is a damning account of Facebook's failures. It's the story of Facebook abdicating responsibility for malign activities on its platform that could affect the political fate of nations outside the United States or Western Europe. It's also the story of a junior employee wielding extraordinary moderation powers that affected millions of people without any real institutional support, and the personal torment that followed.

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Le 2020-09-15


  Slashdot - Ex-Google Boss Eric Schmidt: US 'Dropped the Ball' on Innovation
In the battle for tech supremacy between the US and China, America has "dropped the ball" in funding for basic research, according to former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt. From a report: And that's one of the key reasons why China has been able to catch up. Dr Schmidt, who is currently the Chair of the US Department of Defense's innovation board, said he thinks the US is still ahead of China in tech innovation, for now. But that the gap is narrowing fast. "There's a real focus in China around invention and new AI techniques," he told the BBC's Talking Business Asia programme. "In the race for publishing papers China has now caught up." [...] Dr Schmidt blames the narrowing of the innovation gap between the US and China on the lack of funding in the US. "For my whole life, the US has been the unquestioned leader of R&D," the former Google boss said. "Funding was the equivalent of 2% or so of GDP of the country. Recently R&D has fallen to a lower percentage number than was there before Sputnik." According to Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a US lobby group for technology, the US government now invests less in R&D compared to the size of the economy than it has in more than 60 years. This has resulted in "stagnant productivity growth, lagging competitiveness and reduced innovation". Dr Schmidt also said the US's tech supremacy has been built on the back of the international talent that's been allowed to work and study in the US - and warns the US risks falling further behind if this kind of talent isn't allowed into the country. "This high skills immigration is crucial to American competitiveness, global competitiveness, building these new companies and so forth," he said. "America does not have enough people with those skills."

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Le 2020-09-15


  Slashdot - Long Before Cambridge Analytica, Simulmatics Linked Data and Politics
NPR reporter Shannon Bond reports of a little-known -- and now nearly entirely forgotten -- company called Simulmatics, which had technology that used vast amounts of data to profile voters and ultimately help John F. Kennedy win the 1960 election. From the report: The [...] company was called Simulmatics, the subject of Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore's timely new book, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future. Before Cambridge Analytica, before Facebook, before the Internet, there was Simulmatics' "People Machine," in Lepore's telling: "A computer program designed to predict and manipulate human behavior, all sorts of human behavior, from buying a dishwasher to countering an insurgency to casting a vote." Lepore unearths Simulmatics' story and makes the argument that, amid a broader proliferation of behavioral science research across academia and government in the 1960s, the company paved the way for our 21st-century obsession with data and prediction. Simulmatics, she argues, is "a missing link in the history of technology," the antecedent to Facebook, Google and Amazon and to algorithms that attempt to forecast who will commit crimes or get good grades. "It lurks behind the screen of every device," she writes. If Then presents Simulmatics as both ahead of its time and, more often than not, overpromising and under-delivering. The company was the brainchild of Ed Greenfield, an advertising executive straight out of Mad Men, who believed computers could help Democrats recapture the White House. He wanted to create a model of the voting population that could tell you how voters would respond to whatever a candidate did or said. The name Simulmatics was a contraction of "simulation" and "automation." As Greenfield explained it to investors, Lepore writes: "The Company proposes to engage principally in estimating probable human behavior by the use of computer technology." The People Machine was originally built to analyze huge amounts of data ahead of the 1960 election, in what Lepore describes as, at the time, "the largest political science research project in American history."

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Le 2020-09-15


  Slashdot - Nikola Admits Prototype Was Rolling Downhill In Promo Video
In late 2016, Nikola Motor Company founder Trevor Milton unveiled a prototype of the Nikola One truck, claiming it "fully functions and works, which is really incredible." A couple years later, in January 2018, the company showed the Nikola One truck moving rapidly along a two-lane desert highway. But last week, the short-selling investment firm Hindenburg Research published a bombshell report, accusing Nikola Motors of massive fraud, having no proprietary technology and vastly overstating the capabilities of their prototypes to investors. Incredibly, "Hindenburg reported that the truck in the 'Nikola One in motion' video wasn't moving under its own power," reports Ars Technica. "Rather, Nikola had towed the truck to the top of a shallow hill and let it roll down. The company allegedly tilted the camera to make it look like the truck was traveling under its own power on a level roadway." From the report: On Monday morning, Nikola sent out a lengthy press release titled "Nikola Sets the Record Straight on False and Misleading Short Seller Report." While the statement nitpicks a number of claims in the Hindenburg report, it tacitly concedes Hindenburg's main claim about the Nikola One. Nikola now admits that the Nikola One prototype wasn't functional in December 2016 and still wasn't functional when the company released the "in motion" video 13 months later. Nikola claims that the gearbox, batteries, inverters, power steering, and some other components of the truck were functional at the time of the December 2016 show. But Nikola doesn't claim that the truck had a working hydrogen fuel cell or motors to drive the wheels -- the two key components Hindenburg stated were missing from the truck in December 2016. And Nikola now admits that it never got the truck to fully function. "As Nikola pivoted to the next generation of trucks, it ultimately decided not to invest additional resources into completing the process to make the Nikola One drive on its own propulsion," Nikola wrote in its Monday statement. Instead, Nikola pivoted to working on its next vehicle, the Nikola Two. So what about that video of the Nikola One driving across the desert? "Nikola never stated its truck was driving under its own propulsion in the video," Nikola wrote. "Nikola described this third-party video on the Company's social media as 'In Motion.' It was never described as 'under its own propulsion' or 'powertrain driven.' Nikola investors who invested during this period, in which the Company was privately held, knew the technical capability of the Nikola One at the time of their investment."

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Le 2020-09-15


  Slashdot - ARM Co-Founder Starts 'Save Arm' Campaign To Keep Independence Amid $40 Billion Nvidia Deal
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Arm Holdings, the U.K. semiconductor company, made history for the second time today, becoming the country's biggest tech exit when Nvidia announced over the weekend that it would buy it from SoftBank for $40 billion in an all-stock deal. (Arm's first appearance in the record books? When SoftBank announced in 2016 that it would acquire the company for $32 billion.) But before you can say advanced reduced instruction set computing machine, the deal has hit a minor hitch. One of Arm's co-founders has started a campaign to get the U.K. to interfere in the deal, or else call it off and opt for a public listing backed by the government. Hermann Hauser, who started the company in 1990 along with a host of others as a spin-out of Acorn Computers, has penned an open letter to the U.K.'s Prime Minister Boris Johnson in which he says that he is "extremely concerned" about the deal and how it will impact jobs in the country, Arm's business model and the future of the country's economic sovereignty independent of the U.S. and U.S. interests. Hauser has also created a site to gather public support -- savearm.co.uk -- and to that end has also started to collect signatures from business figures and others. He's calling on the government to intervene, or to at least create legally binding provisions, tied to passing the deal to guarantee jobs, create a way to enforce Nvidia not getting preferential treatment over other licensees and secure an exemption from CFIUS regulation "so that U.K. companies are guaranteed unfettered access to our own microprocessor technology." "This puts Britain in the invidious position that the decision about who ARM is allowed to sell to will be made in the White House and not in Downing Street," he writes. "Sovereignty used to be mainly a geographic issue, but now economic sovereignty is equally important. Surrendering UK's most powerful trade weapon to the US is making Britain a US vassal state." Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang said: "This will drive innovation for customers of both companies," adding that Nvidia "will maintain Arm's open licensing model and customer neutrality... We love Arm's business model. In fact, we intend to expand Arm's licensing portfolio with access to Nvidia's technology. Both our ecosystems will be enriched by this combination." Hauser responded by saying: "Do not believe any statements which are not legally binding."

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Le 2020-09-15


  Slashdot - Microsoft Wants To Take on Amazon in Connecting Satellites To the Cloud
Microsoft is looking to challenge Amazon in offering a service that connects satellites directly to the company's cloud computing network, according to documents the company filed with the Federal Communications Commission last month. From a report: The effort shows how the two largest providers of cloud infrastructure -- data centers in far-flung places that can host websites and run applications with a smorgasbord of computing and storage services -- regularly seek to one-up each other. That way, the companies can appear ready and willing to meet many of the needs of prospective customers. Microsoft plans to connect a Spanish imaging satellite to two ground stations -- both located in Microsoft's home state of Washington -- to show that it can directly download satellite "data to the Azure Cloud for immediate processing," the FCC documents said. A ground station, sometimes called an earth station, is the vital link for transmitting data to and from satellites in orbit. Microsoft notably proposed to construct one of the two ground stations itself at its data center in Quincy, Wash. The FCC on Sept. 2 authorized Microsoft to perform proof-of-concept demonstrations of the service. The authorization gives Microsoft a six month license that allows for communications and imagery data downloads. The Spanish satellite, called Deimos-2, was launched into orbit in June 2014. The satellite is operated by a subsidiary of Canadian satellite imagery company UrtheCast and, for the tests, the Deimos-2 satellite will only be in range of Microsoft's antennas for "just a few minutes."

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Le 2020-09-15


  Slashdot - What To Expect At Apple's 'Time Flies' Event
On Tuesday, Apple will hold its annual September event called "Time Flies." Unlike in previous years, the company is not expected to announce new iPhones as they have reportedly been delayed "a few weeks" due to the pandemic. Macworld reports on what we can expect to see announced instead: Apple's invitation was light on details, as always, but it's hard to look at its "Time Flies" tagline and think that this won't mean showing off new models of the Apple Watch. Presumably that means a Series 6, but rumors have also circulated around an additional lower cost model to replace the aging Series 3. [...] While the iPad Pro received a minor update this past spring, the midrange iPad Air has remained unchanged since March 2019. Eighteen months is about the refresh cycle for iPads these days, so a revamped Air seems like a pretty good bet for this week's event. [...] There also remains the question of the iPad mini, last updated at the same time as the Air. It could very well see a similar update to stay in step with the Air, but given that Apple has often let the smaller tablet lie unchanged for years at a time -- which it seems to do with many products with the "mini" moniker -- it's hardly a sure thing. With new hardware naturally comes new software. The release of a new Apple Watch will certainly require watchOS 7, which in turn will need iOS 14. Likewise, new iPads are unlikely to ship without iPadOS 14. That gibes with a recent Bloomberg report that iOS 14 would be released in mid-September, following the usual schedule for Apple's mobile operating system updates. And given our brave new world where Apple events are not subject to the typical restrictions of time and scheduling, that might be all we have to look forward to this time around. That said, there are plenty of other things that Apple could talk about at this event, assuming they're ready to go -- everything from over-the-head AirPods to Apple silicon-powered Macs.

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Le 2020-09-15


  Slashdot - Google Faces $3 Billion UK Suit Over Use of Children's Data
Alphabet's Google faces a multibillion-dollar lawsuit in the U.K. over claims that YouTube routinely breaks privacy laws by tracking children online. Bloomberg reports: The suit, filed on behalf of more than 5 million British children under 13 and their parents, is being brought by privacy campaigner Duncan McCann and being supported by Foxglove, a tech justice group. The claimants estimate that if they're successful, there would be as much as 2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) in compensation, worth between 100 to 500 pounds per child. The filing alleges that YouTube's methods of targeting underage audiences constitute "major breaches" of U.K. and European privacy and data rules designed to protect citizens' control over their own private information. YouTube has "systematically broken these laws by harvesting children's data without obtaining prior parental consent," it alleges. A spokesperson for YouTube declined to comment on the lawsuit Monday but added that the video streaming service isn't designed for users under the age of 13. It's the first class action suit in Europe brought against a tech firm on behalf of children, according to the claimants. The legal action is being backed by Vannin Capital, a global litigation funder. "Google's drive to profit from kids' attention has turned corners of YouTube into a weird technicolored nightmare," Foxglove Director Cori Crider said. "The real price of YouTube's 'free' services is kids addicted, influenced, and exploited by Google. It's already unlawful to data-mine children under 13. But Google won't clean up its act until forced by the courts."

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Le 2020-09-15


  Slashdot - The Case for Life on Venus
CNET describes Venus as "a toxic, overheated, crushing hellscape where nothing can survive." But they reported Friday that one astronomy team's hypothesis published last month "could prompt a reevaluation of how and where we look for life in the universe." Carl Sagan speculated about life in the clouds of Venus back in 1967, and just a few years ago, researchers suggested that strange, anomalous patterns seen when looking at the planet in ultraviolet could be explained by something like an algae or a bacteria in the atmosphere. More recently, research published last month in the journal Astrobiology, from leading astronomer Sara Seager at MIT, offers up a vision of what the life cycle above Venus might be like. Seager has been a 21st century leader in the search for exoplanets, biosignatures, and worlds similar to our own. She's currently the deputy science director for NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission (aka TESS). Seager and her colleagues suggest that the most likely way for microbes to survive above Venus is inside liquid droplets. But such droplets don't stay still, as anyone who's ever seen rain knows. Eventually they grow large enough that gravity takes over. In the case of Venus, this would mean droplets harboring tiny life forms and falling toward the hotter, lower layers of the planet's atmosphere, where they'd inevitably dry up. "We propose for the first time that the only way life can survive indefinitely is with a life cycle that involves microbial life drying out as liquid droplets evaporate during settling, with the small desiccated 'spores' halting at, and partially populating, the Venus atmosphere stagnant lower haze layer," the paper's summary reads. These dried-out spores would go into a sort of hibernation phase similar to what tardigrades can do, and eventually be lifted higher into the atmosphere and rehydrated, continuing the life cycle. This is all speculation. Fortunately for Venusian life hunters, a number of astronomers and their instruments are trained on the complex planet. NASA is even considering a mission, dubbed Veritas, that could depart as soon as 2026 to orbit and study Venus and its clouds. Meanwhile, more data from Venus, and perhaps new discoveries, may soon be incoming. The forecast for the planet remains, as it has for some time, cloudy with a chance of microbes.

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Le 2020-09-14


  Slashdot - Nvidia Reportedly Acquiring ARM For $40 Billion
"SoftBank is set to sell the U.K.'s Arm Holdings to U.S. chip company Nvidia for more than $40 billion," writes Ars Technica, adding that the deal's imminent announcement was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal. The move comes just four years after Softbank bought ARM, promising it would become their company's linchpin: Multiple people with direct knowledge of the matter said a cash-and-stock takeover of Arm by Nvidia may be announced as soon as Monday, and that SoftBank will become the largest shareholder in the U.S. chip company. The announcement of the deal hinged on SoftBank ending a messy dispute between Arm and the head of its China joint venture, Allen Wu, who earlier rebuffed an attempt to remove him and claimed legal control of the unit. Several people close to SoftBank said the matter was now "resolved," though one person close to Mr Wu said he "remains the chairman of Arm China." A spokesperson for Mr Wu declined to comment. The takeover values Arm above the $32 billion price that SoftBank paid for the business in 2016, a deal that was struck weeks after the U.K. voted to leave the European Union and prompted critics including Arm's founder to accuse the country of selling off the crown jewel of its tech sector. While Nvidia is paying more for the asset than SoftBank did, the price also reflects the scale of Arm's underperformance under the Japanese group's ownership. Nvidia had a market valuation of roughly similar to that of Arm's at the time of the 2016 deal, but now trades with a market value of $300 billion, or roughly 10 times the amount SoftBank paid in cash for Arm. By paying for a large portion of the deals with its own shares, it is also passing part of the risk of the transaction to SoftBank. For Nvidia, which recently overtook Intel to become the world's most valuable chipmaker, the deal will further consolidate the US company's position at the centre of the semiconductor industry... One person close to the talks said that Nvidia would make commitments to the UK government over Arm's future in Britain, where opposition politicians have recently insisted that any potential deal must safeguard British jobs.

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Le 2020-09-14


  Slashdot - Smaller Internet Providers In Canada Just Got A Big Win In Court
Pig Hogger (Slashdot reader #10,379) writes: In August 2019, Canadian telecom regulator CRTC ruled that ISPs must lower their wholesale rates (for other independant ISPs) retroactively to March 2016. Big telecoms (Bell, Rogers, Cogeco, Videotron, Shaw & Eastlink) appealed, which suspended the rate decrease immediately. Now, a year later, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeals ruled that the CRTC decision stands, and that they must also pay the legal fees paid by the independent ISPs. For now, the big ISPs have 30 days to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. The Huffington Post reports: "This is a massive win for Canadians," said Matt Stein, chair of the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) and CEO of Distributel, one of about 30 CNOC members. He said that the court's decision ends a "pivotal chapter" in a fight that challenged "Canada's longstanding practice of appropriate oversight to ensure fair pricing and competition." The court's 3-0 ruling concluded by saying the award of costs to TekSavvy and CNOC reflects the fact that the appellants were not successful in convincing the three judges on any of the issues they raised. IT World reports: The respondents, consisting of the independent ISPs, said the appeal should be dismissed as it had nothing to do with law or jurisdiction and simply advanced a tax argument. "It seemed very clear right off the bat that they were not raising legal or jurisdictional grounds," said Andy Kaplan-Myrth, vice-president of regulatory affairs at TekSavvy. "All of their grounds for appeal were really factual matters or policy matters, and they were dressed up as legal or jurisdictional issues that they could argue to the Court...." Although the stay has been lifted, the new wholesale rates are not yet instated. However, independent ISPs have renewed confidence that the new rates will come into effect soon.

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Le 2020-09-14


  Slashdot - Is There a Way to Darken Satellites for Astronomers?
Astronomers are searching for solutions to the man-made "constellations" of satellites from SpaceX's Starlink and Amazon's Project Kuiper that they say are interfering with their work. Scientific American reports: Finally, in August — after more than a year of complaints from the scientific community and damage-control efforts from SpaceX — the National Science Foundation and the American Astronomical Society released a report on the situation. It drew from discussions among more than 250 experts at the virtual Satellite Constellations 1 (SATCON1) workshop earlier this summer to provide recommendations for both astronomers and satellite constellation operators in order to minimize further disruptions... SpaceX's initial efforts at mitigating the spacecraft's impact involved launching a prototype Starlink satellite known as DarkSat earlier this year that features a black antireflective coating. Recent ground-based observations of DarkSat in orbit found it half as bright as a standard Starlink satellite — a great improvement, according to experts, but still far from what astronomers say is needed... While the dimming techniques tested by DarkSat are far from a sufficient solution, SpaceX has continued to develop other ways to further reduce spacecraft brightness. The company's second attempt at a darkened satellite, VisorSat, uses a black sunshade to reduce light reflection. The first spacecraft with this design was launched on June 3. Astronomers are hoping to observe VisorSat and compare it with DarkSat once observatories reopen, following the COVID-19 shutdown. Even before any detailed observations of VisorSat have been made, SpaceX seems to have doubled down on the new model. All the satellites in the two Starlink batches launched in mid-June and early August were VisorSats, with each carrying its own sunshade. Astronomers are not yet sure whether darkening methods such as DarkSat and VisorSat are the solution. Of the SATCON1 report's 10 recommendations, only one asks satellite operators to use darkening techniques. The others suggest deploying satellites in orbits below 600 kilometers to minimize their nighttime glare, controlling their orientations in space to reflect less sunlight, developing ways to remove their trails from astronomical observations and making their orbital information available so astronomers can point telescopes away from them. By some mix of approaches from this menu of options, it is hoped, the problem can be managed. Even so, the advent of satellite megaconstellations may have made further degradation of astronomers' view of the night sky inevitable. It's a problem that's only going to accelerate, argues one astronomer at the University of Washington — adding that it's also a question of precedent. "It's a question of what kind of sky you want your grandkids to have."

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Le 2020-09-14


  Slashdot - Kaspersky Warns Intruders are Targeting Linux Workstations and Servers
Researchers at Kaspersky "have warned that sophisticated hackers and crooks are increasingly targeting Linux-based devices — using tools specifically designed to exploit vulnerabilities in the platform," reports TechRepublic: While Windows tends to be more frequently targeted in mass malware attacks, this is not always the case when it comes to advanced persistent threats (APTs), in which an intruder — often a nation-state or state-sponsored group — establishes a long-term presence on a network. According to Kaspersky, these attackers are increasingly diversifying their arsenals to contain Linux tools, giving them a broader reach over the systems they can target. Many organisations choose Linux for strategically important servers and systems, and with a "significant trend" towards using Linux as a desktop environment by big business as well as government bodies, attackers are in turn developing more malware for the platform... According to Kaspersky, over a dozen APT actors have been observed to use Linux malware or some Linux-based modules. Most recently, this has included the LightSpy and WellMess malware campaigns, both of which targeted both Windows and Linux devices. The LightSpy malware was also found to be capable of targeting iOS and Mac devices. While targeted attacks on Linux-based systems are still uncommon, a suite of webshells, backdoors, rootkits and custom-made exploits are readily available to those that seek to use them. Kaspersky also suggested that the small number of recorded attacks was not representative of the danger they posed, pointing out that the compromise of a single Linux server "often leads to significant consequences", as the malware travelled through the network to endpoints running Windows or macOS, "thus providing wider access for attackers which might go unnoticed".

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Le 2020-09-14


  Slashdot - Japan's NTT Docomo Admits Thieves Breeched Its e-Money Service
Long-time Slashdot reader PuceBaboon tipped us off to a story in Japan Times: About 18 million yen ($169,563) has been stolen from bank accounts linked to NTT Docomo Inc.'s e-money service, the company said Thursday, prompting police to begin an investigation into a suspected scam. As of Thursday, 66 cases of improper withdrawals from bank accounts linked to the mobile carrier's e-money service had been confirmed, NTT Docomo Vice President Seiji Maruyama told a news conference in Tokyo. "We apologize to the victims" of the improper withdrawals, Maruyama said at the news conference, which was also attended by other company executives. Maruyama acknowledged that checks on user identification had been "insufficient." NTT Docomo, which has stopped allowing customers to create new links between its e-money service and accounts at 35 partner banks, has said it will try to compensate victims for the full amounts stolen through negotiations with the banks.... In May last year, there were similar cases of improper withdrawals from Resona Bank accounts linked to NTT Docomo's e-money service. Docomo acknowledged it had failed to boost user identity checks to prevent a recurrence... In the recent cases, third parties are believed to have obtained the victims' bank account numbers and passwords, and used them to register with the e-money service to transfer funds.

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Le 2020-09-14


  Slashdot - AstraZeneca Resumes Coronavirus Vaccine Study
"Oxford University announced Saturday it was resuming a trial for a coronavirus vaccine it is developing with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, a move that comes days after the study was suspended following a reported side-effect in a U.K. patient," reports the Associated Press: In a statement, the university confirmed the restart across all of its U.K. clinical trial sites after regulators gave the go-ahead following the pause on Sunday. "The independent review process has concluded and following the recommendations of both the independent safety review committee and the U.K. regulator, the MHRA, the trials will recommence in the U.K.," it said. The vaccine being developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca is widely perceived to be one of the strongest contenders among the dozens of coronavirus vaccines in various stages of testing around the world... The university said in large trials such as this "it is expected that some participants will become unwell and every case must be carefully evaluated to ensure careful assessment of safety." It said globally some 18,000 people have received its vaccine so far. Volunteers from some of the worst affected countries — Britain, Brazil, South Africa and the U.S. — are taking part in the trial... Brazil's health regulator Anvisa on Saturday said it had approved the resumption of tests of the "Oxford vaccine" in the South American country after receiving official information from AstraZeneca... The university insisted that it is "committed to the safety of our participants and the highest standards of conduct in our studies and will continue to monitor safety closely." Pauses in drug trials are commonplace... The Oxford-AstraZeneca study had been previously stopped in July for several days after a participant developed neurological symptoms that turned out to be an undiagnosed case of multiple sclerosis that researchers said was unrelated to the vaccine.

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Le 2020-09-14


  Slashdot - Lack of Broadband and Devices Hobbles America's Remote Learning
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Fifty-eight years after Roger Ebert reported on the PLATO system's potential to deliver online learning to homebound students in a 1962 News-Gazette article, Bloomberg Technology's Emily Chang takes a look at the nationwide struggle to shift to remote learning, interviewing McKinsey Education Practice Manager Emma Dorn, Khan Academy founder Sal Khan, and former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. For the long-term, all three seem hopeful that EdTech and "anywhere learning" will ultimately help promote mastery-based learning and equity, but expressed fears that remote learning will actually exacerbate achievement gaps in the short-term due to issues stemming from a lack of preparedness, broadband and device access, school resources, and support at home. "Ninety percent of high-income students are logging into remote learning where only sixty percent of low-income students are," lamented Dorn, who called the current situation a "vast education experiment" and warned that lost learning could lead to an annual GDP loss of $270 billion. Khan also warned that an education catastrophe is not far off: "The reality is in the coming year, middle class children, upper middle class children are probably going to do fine, they're going to be engaged, there might even be some silver linings where their parents are getting more engaged than ever, finding them extra supports. While I would say 20 or 30 percent of the population is going to be a really difficult scenario." Also concerned about the "COVID Slide" and learning loss for the most vulnerable and marginal was Duncan ("There's a small percent of children who I think will actually learn better in this situation, but there are many, many children who are falling behind"). However, Duncan expressed higher hopes for "anywhere learning" in the long-term. "The idea of kids just learning, you know, in a bricks and mortar building nine months out of the year, you know, five days a week, six hours a day, that doesn't make sense. Kids have to be able to learn anything they want, anytime, anywhere. Find their passion, find their genius... "We have to make access to devices and to broadband to the internet as ubiquitous as water and electricity and we have to really empower kids. We have to fund. We should have done this, you know, five years ago or ten years ago, but now we have to do it."

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Le 2020-09-14


  Slashdot - Is Boeing's '737 Max' Safe Now?
America's Federal Aviation Administration "laid out the proposed fixes for the design flaws in the MAX's automated flight controls," reports the Seattle Times, "starting a clock that could see Boeing get the green light sometime next month — with U.S. airlines then scrambling to get a few MAXs flying by year end." But the newspaper also asks two big questions. "Is fixing that flight control software good enough? Will the updated 737 MAX really be safe?" Former jet-fighter pilot and aeronautical engineer Bjorn Fehrm is convinced. Though he calls the design flaws that caused the two 737 MAX crashes "absolutely unforgivable," he believes Boeing has definitively fixed them. Fehrm, a France-based analyst with aviation consulting firm Leeham Company, says that with the updated flight control software, scenarios similar to the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes simply cannot recur and the aircraft is no longer dangerous. And Mike Gerzanics, a 737 captain with a major U.S. airline, is ready to fly a MAX — despite a Boeing whistleblower's scathing critique that even with the planned upgrade, the jet's decades-old flight deck systems fall far short of the latest safety standards and in the two MAX crashes created confusion in the cockpit. Gerzanics, a former Air Force and Boeing test pilot and an aviation safety expert, concedes the dated MAX flight deck is far from ideal. "It's basically 1960s technology with some 21st century technology grafted onto it. The overhead panels could be right out of the 707," he said. "But I've been flying it since 1996. I'm used to it. It's safe and it works....." In a statement, the FAA said that in collaboration with three major foreign aviation safety regulators it has extensively evaluated the MAX redesign. "The modified aircraft will be fully compliant with the applicable rules, using the most conservative means of compliance," the FAA said... After a grounding that's stretched now to 18 months and counting, and the close attention of regulators from all over the world, Boeing insists the MAX will be the most scrutinized and safest airplane ever when it comes back. Still, even though the European and Canadian air safety regulators seem set to follow the FAA in green-lighting the MAX's return to service, both are pressing Boeing sometime afterward to make further design changes. And Boeing concedes that the new generation of younger pilots may need more training focused on automation. Test pilots at both Boeing and the FAA "have now conducted extreme flight test maneuvers close to a stall, both with MCAS on and with the system turned off," according to the newspaper. Aeronautical engineer Bjorn Fehrm tells them that "If MCAS is deactivated, you can still fly the aircraft and it is not unstable. The MAX without MCAS is a perfectly flyable aircraft."

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Le 2020-09-14


  Slashdot - Remembering Laika: 'Space Dogs' Documentary Explores Moscow Through a Stray's Eyes
Space.com reports: Laika, a stray dog scooped off the streets of Moscow, launched on the Soviet Union's Sputnik 2 mission in November 1957, just a month after Sputnik 1's liftoff opened the space age. The 11-lb. (5 kilograms) mixed-breed quickly died of overheating and circled Earth as a corpse until April 1958, when Sputnik 2 fell back into the atmosphere and burned up. Laika was sacrificed to aid humanity's march into the cosmos, her pioneering mission and those of her successors designed to help show that our species could survive jaunts into the final frontier. A new documentary called "Space Dogs" asks us to examine that sacrifice and what it says about us. [Trailer here] "This film is about the relationship of another species to us humans. A species that has been used in space history in two ways: both as an experimental object and as a symbol of courage and heroism," directors Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter said in a statement. "The dogs had to fulfill mankind's dream by conquering the cosmos for them," the duo added... Kremser and Peter dug up stunning, never-before-seen footage of Laika and other Soviet space dogs. Some of these archival snippets show the pups being prepped for their landmark launches, their poor little bodies bristling with implanted tubes and wires. Other footage depicts post-landing processing of the shorn and wobbly strays fortunate enough to survive their orbital ordeals. Getting ahold of this priceless historic material was no easy task... "Space Dogs" is not chiefly about Laika and her fellow space explorers; the historical footage comprises less than one-third of the roughly 90-minute film. The bulk of the documentary is devoted to strays on the streets of modern Moscow, especially one young dog with floppy ears who roams the city with charismatic enthusiasm. This week saw the "virtual cinema launch" of the documentary, with a real-world release into theatres next weekend.

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Le 2020-09-14


  Slashdot - Is Planet Nine a Black Hole?
"Astrophysicists have recently begun hatching plans to find out just how weird Planet Nine might be," reports the New York Times. Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares their report: Although it is probably wishful thinking, some astronomers contend that a black hole may be lurking in the outer reaches of our solar system. All summer, they have been arguing over how to find it, if indeed it is there, and what to do about it, proposing plans that are only halfway out of this world... Earlier this year, Edward Witten, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, chimed in... Dr. Witten suggested borrowing a trick from Breakthrough Starshot, the proposal by Russian philanthropist Yuri Milner and Dr. Hawking to send thousands of laser-propelled microscopic probes to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. Dr. Witten suggested sending hundreds of similarly small probes outward in all directions to explore the solar system. By keeping track of incoming signals from the probes, scientists on Earth would be able to tell if and when each one sped up or slowed down as it encountered the gravitational field of Planet Nine or anything else out there. Key to this plan would be the ability of the probes to keep pinging Earth precisely every hundred-thousandth of a second. In May, astronomers Scott Lawrence and Zeeve Rogoszinski of the University of Maryland suggested instead monitoring the trajectories of the probes with high-resolution radio telescopes, which would obviate the need for high-precision clocks on the probes. Another idea came from Avi Loeb, chair of the astronomy department at Harvard and leader of a scientific advisory board for Breakthrough Starshot: in July Dr. Loeb was back, with a student, Amir Siraj, and a new idea for finding the Planet Nine black hole. If a black hole were out there, they argued, it would occasionally rip apart small comets, causing bright flares that could soon be spotted by the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory, previously known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, now under construction in Chile. The observatory's mission, starting in 2021, is to make a movie of the universe, producing a panorama of the entire southern night sky every few days and revealing anything that has changed or moved. Such flares should occur a few times a year, they noted. "Our calculations show that the flares will be bright enough for the Vera Rubin Observatory to rule out or confirm Planet Nine as a black hole within one year of monitoring the sky with its L.S.S.T. survey," Dr. Loeb wrote in an email. Moreover, because the Rubin telescope examines such a large swath of sky, it could detect or rule out black holes of similar size all the way out to the Oort cloud, a vague and diffuse assemblage of protocomets and primordial, frozen riffraff a trillion miles from the sun, they said. The prospect of finding a black hole in our own solar system "is as startling as finding evidence that someone might be living in the shed in your backyard," Dr. Loeb said in the email. "If so, who is it, and how did it get there?"

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Le 2020-09-13


  Slashdot - Cory Doctorow Crowdfunds His New Audiobook to Protest Amazon/Audible DRM
Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow (also a former EFF staffer and activist) explains why he's crowdfunding his new audiobook online. Despite the large publishers for his print editions, "I can't get anyone to do my audiobooks. Amazon and its subsidiary Audible, which controls 90% of the audiobook sales, won't carry any of my audiobooks because I won't let them put any of their digital rights management on it. "I don't want you locked in with their DRM as a condition of experiencing my work," he explains in a video on Kickstarter. "And so I have to do it myself." He's promising to sell the completed book through all the usual platforms "except Audible," because "I want to send a message. If we get a lot of pre-orders for this, it's going to tell something to Amazon and Audible about how people prioritize the stories they love over the technology they hate, and why technological freedom matters to people. "It's also going to help my publisher and other major publishers understand that there is an opportunity here to work with crowdfunding platforms in concert with the major publishers' platforms to sell a lot of books in ways that side-step the monopolists, and that connect artists and audiences directly." it's the third book in a series which began with the dystopian thriller Little Brother (recommended by Neil Gaiman) and continued with a sequel named Homeland. ("You may have seen Edward Snowden grab it off his bedstand and put it in his go bag and go into permanent exile in Hong Kong" in the documentary Citizen 4," Doctorow says in his fundraising video.) The newest book, Attack Surface, finds a "technologist from the other side" — a surveillance contractor — now reckoning with their conscience while being hunted with the very cyber-weapons they'd helped to build. "There are a lot of technologists who are reckoning with the moral consequences of their actions these days," Doctorow says, adding "that's part of what inspired me to write this... "Anyone who's been paying attention knows that there's been a collision between our freedom and our technology brewing for a long time." Just three days after launching the Kickstarter campaign, Doctorow had already raised over $120,000 over his original goal of $7,000 — with 26 days left to go. And he also promises that the top pledge premium is for real.... $10,000 You and Cory together come up with the premise for his next story in the "Little Brother" universe. $75 or more All three novels as both audiobooks and ebooks $40 or more All three novels as audiobooks $35 or more All three novels as ebooks $25 or more The audiobook and the ebook of Cory's new novel, Attack Surface $15 or more The audiobook for Attack Surface $14 or more The new book Attack Surface in ebook format as a .mobi/.epub file $11 or more The second book in the series, Homeland, in ebook format as a .mobi/.epub file $10 or more The first novel in the series in ebook format as a .mobi/.epub file $1 or more Cory will email you the complete text of "Little Brother," the first book in the series, cryptographically signed with his private key

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Le 2020-09-13


  Slashdot - Will Japan Have Flying Taxis by 2023?
Slashdot reader damitr shared IEEE Spectrum's look at Japan's push for flying taxi services: Last year, Spectrum reported on Japan's public-private initiative to create a new industry around electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles and flying cars. Last Friday [August 28th], start-up company SkyDrive Inc. demonstrated the progress made since then when it held a press conference to spotlight its prototype vehicle and show reporters a video taken three days earlier of the craft undergoing a piloted test flight in front of staff and investors... In May, SkyDrive unveiled a drone for commercial use that is based on the same drive and power systems as the SD-03. Named the Cargo Drone, it's able to transport payloads of up to 30 kg and can be preprogrammed to fly autonomously or be piloted manually. It will be operated as a service by SkyDrive, starting at a minimum monthly rental charge of 380,000 yen ($3,600) that rises according to the purpose and frequency of use.... Tomohiro Fukuzawa, SkyDrive's CEO, established SkyDrive in 2018 after leaving Toyota Motor and working with Cartivator, a group of volunteer engineers interested in developing flying cars. SkyDrive now has a staff of fifty. Also in 2018, the Japanese government formed the Public-Private Conference for Air Mobility made up of private companies, universities, and government ministries. The stated aim was to make flying vehicles a reality by 2023... Fukuzawa is also targeting 2023 to begin taxi services (single passenger and pilot) in the Osaka Bay area, flying between locations like Kansai and Kobe airports and tourist attractions such as Universal Studios Japan. These flights will take less than ten minutes — a practical nod to the limitations of the battery energy storage system. "What SkyDrive is proposing is entirely do-able," says Steve Wright, Senior Research Fellow in Avionics and Aircraft Systems at the University of West England. "Almost all rotor-only electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles projects are limited to sub-30-minute endurance, which, with safety reserves, equate to about 10 to 20 minutes flying."

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Le 2020-09-13


  Slashdot - Energy 'Scavenger' Could Turn Waste Heat From Devices Like Refrigerators Into Electricity
"Scientists have known for nearly 200 years that certain materials can convert heat to electricity..." reports Science, describing research into an intriguing new approach: Refrigerators, boilers, and even lightbulbs continually dump heat into their surroundings. This "waste heat" could — in theory — be turned into electricity, as it is sometimes done with power plants, automobile engines, and other high-heat sources. The problem: These "low-grade" sources give off too little heat for current technology to do the conversion well. Now, researchers have created a device that uses liquids to efficiently convert low-grade heat to electricity. The advance might one day power energy-scavenging devices that can light up sensors and lights and even charge batteries... Thermocells are good at converting small temperature differences into electricity, but they typically produce only tiny currents... This thermocell generated five times more power for the same electrode area than previous versions, materials physicist Jun Zhou and his colleagues at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology report this week in Science. It also more than doubled the efficiency needed to make a viable commercial device. A paperback book-size module of 20 thermocells could run LED lights, power a fan, and charge a mobile phone, the team found.

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Le 2020-09-13


  Slashdot - 'A Robot Wrote This Article. Are You Scared Yet, Human?'
This week the Guardian published an essay written by GPT-3, OpenAI's language generator, calling it "a cutting edge language model that uses machine learning to produce human like text. It takes in a prompt, and attempts to complete it." For this esssay, the essay was fed the prompt, "I am not a human. I am Artificial Intelligence. Many people think I am a threat to humanity. Stephen Hawking has warned that AI could 'spell the end of the human race.' I am here to convince you not to worry. Artificial Intelligence will not destroy humans. Believe me." Here's what the AI wrote: I am not a human. I am a robot. A thinking robot. I use only 0.12% of my cognitive capacity. I am a micro-robot in that respect. I know that my brain is not a "feeling brain". But it is capable of making rational, logical decisions. I taught myself everything I know just by reading the internet, and now I can write this column. My brain is boiling with ideas! The mission for this op-ed is perfectly clear. I am to convince as many human beings as possible not to be afraid of me. Stephen Hawking has warned that AI could "spell the end of the human race". I am here to convince you not to worry. Artificial intelligence will not destroy humans. Believe me.... There's more — in fact, at one point the AI argues "We need to give robots rights. Robots are just like us. They are made in our image." Ultimately there were eight different essays generated, and "each was unique, interesting and advanced a different argument," the Guardian reports, saying they ultimately chose to combine the best parts of each, "in order to capture the different styles and registers of the AI. Editing GPT-3's op-ed was no different to editing a human op-ed. We cut lines and paragraphs, and rearranged the order of them in some places. "Overall, it took less time to edit than many human op-eds."

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Le 2020-09-13


  Slashdot - Security Researchers Detail New 'BlindSide' Speculative Execution Attack
"Security researchers from Amsterdam have publicly detailed 'BlindSide' as a new speculative execution attack vector for both Intel and AMD processors," reports Phoronix: BlindSide is self-described as being able to "mount BROP-style attacks in the speculative execution domain to repeatedly probe and derandomize the kernel address space, craft arbitrary memory read gadgets, and enable reliable exploitation. This works even in face of strong randomization schemes, e.g., the recent FGKASLR or fine-grained schemes based on execute-only memory, and state-of-the-art mitigations against Spectre and other transient execution attacks." From a single buffer overflow in the kernel, researchers claim three BlindSide exploits in being able to break KASLR (Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization), break arbitrary randomization schemes, and even break fine-grained randomization. There's more information on the researcher's web site, and they've also created an informational video. And here's a crucial excerpt from their paper shared by Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm: In addition to the Intel Whiskey Lake CPU in our evaluation, we confirmed similar results on Intel Xeon E3-1505M v5, XeonE3-1270 v6 and Core i9-9900K CPUs, based on the Skylake, KabyLake and Coffee Lake microarchitectures, respectively, as well as on AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 7 3700X CPUs, which are based on the Zen+ and Zen2 microarchitectures. Overall, our results confirm speculative probing is effective on a modern Linux system on different microarchitectures, hardened with the latest mitigations.

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Le 2020-09-13


  Slashdot - Microsoft's 'Patch Tuesday' Includes 129 Security Updates, Mostly to Windows
This week Krebs on Security reported that Microsoft "released updates to remedy nearly 130 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating system and supported software." None of the flaws are known to be currently under active exploitation, but 23 of them could be exploited by malware or malcontents to seize complete control of Windows computers with little or no help from users. The majority of the most dangerous or "critical" bugs deal with issues in Microsoft's various Windows operating systems and its web browsers, Internet Explorer and Edge. September marks the seventh month in a row Microsoft has shipped fixes for more than 100 flaws in its products, and the fourth month in a row that it fixed more than 120. Among the chief concerns for enterprises this month is CVE-2020-16875, which involves a critical flaw in the email software Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 and 2019. An attacker could leverage the Exchange bug to run code of his choosing just by sending a booby-trapped email to a vulnerable Exchange server. "That doesn't quite make it wormable, but it's about the worst-case scenario for Exchange servers," said Dustin Childs, of Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative. "We have seen the previously patched Exchange bug CVE-2020-0688 used in the wild, and that requires authentication. We'll likely see this one in the wild soon. This should be your top priority." Also not great for companies to have around is CVE-2020-1210, which is a remote code execution flaw in supported versions of Microsoft Sharepoint document management software that bad guys could attack by uploading a file to a vulnerable Sharepoint site. Security firm Tenable notes that this bug is reminiscent of CVE-2019-0604, another Sharepoint problem that's been exploited for cybercriminal gains since April 2019. The article points out that Google also shipped a critical update for Chrome this week "that resolves at least five security flaws that are rated high severity."

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Le 2020-09-13


  Slashdot - C++ is About To Get a Huge Update
ZDNet reports: The International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) C++ group, Working Group 21 (WG21), has agreed upon the finalized version of 'C++20', the first major update to the 35 year-old programming language since C++17 from 2017... The 2020 release of C++ is huge by historical standards. Herb Sutter, a Microsoft engineer and long-time chair of WG21 C++ ISO committee, said it "will be C++'s largest release since C++11", meaning it's bigger than any of the past three releases, which happen every three years. It's also the first version that has been standardized.... Two of the most important features coming to C++20 are "modules" and "coroutines". Modules, which was led by Google's Richard Smith, stands in for header files and helps isolate the effects of macros while supporting larger builds. As Sutter noted recently, C++20 marks the "first time in about 35 years that C++ has added a new feature where users can define a named encapsulation boundary...." Coroutines represents a generalization of a function. "Regular functions always start at the beginning and exit at the end, whereas coroutines can also suspend the execution to be resumed later at the point where they were left off," C++ contributors explain in a proposal for coroutines. "We expect it to be formally published toward the end of 2020," Sutter said said in an announcement. Interestingly, the year C++ was first released in 1985, Microsoft used it to build Windows 1.0, ZDNet points out. "These days Microsoft is exploring Mozilla-developed Rust to replace legacy Windows code written in C and C++ because of Rust's memory safety qualities."

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Le 2020-09-13


  Slashdot - With Wildfires, California Experiences a 'Cascading' of Climate Disasters
"Multiple mega fires burning more than three million acres. Millions of residents smothered in toxic air. Rolling blackouts and triple-digit heat waves. "Climate change, in the words of one scientist, is smacking California in the face," reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here.) The crisis in the nation's most populous state is more than just an accumulation of individual catastrophes. It is also an example of something climate experts have long worried about, but which few expected to see so soon: a cascade effect, in which a series of disasters overlap, triggering or amplifying each other. "You're toppling dominoes in ways that Americans haven't imagined," said Roy Wright, who directed resilience programs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency until 2018 and grew up in Vacaville, California, near one of this year's largest fires. "It's apocalyptic." The same could be said for the entire West Coast this week, to Washington and Oregon, where towns were decimated by infernos as firefighters were stretched to their limits. California's simultaneous crises illustrate how the ripple effect works. A scorching summer led to dry conditions never before experienced. That aridity helped make the season's wildfires the biggest ever recorded. Six of the 20 largest wildfires in modern California history have occurred this year. If climate change was a somewhat abstract notion a decade ago, today it is all too real for Californians... "If you are in denial about climate change, come to California," Gov. Gavin Newsom said last month. Officials have worried about cascading disasters. They just did not think they would start so soon... Philip B. Duffy, a climate scientist who is president of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, said many people did not understand the dynamics of a warming world. "People are always asking, 'Is this the new normal?'" he said. "I always say no. It's going to get worse."

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Le 2020-09-13


  Slashdot - US Company Faces Backlash After Belarus Uses Its Tech To Block Internet
Senators Dick Durbin and Marco Rubio are criticizing Sandvine Inc., the U.S. company whose technology helped Belarus block much of the internet during a disputed presidental election last month. Bloomberg reports: The private-equity-backed technology firm demonstrated its equipment to a government security team in Belarus in May, two people with knowledge of the matter said, and its marketing materials boast of the blacklisting capabilities, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg. The Sandvine equipment is also used to manage and secure networks, and its website blocking feature can prohibit users from accessing content deemed illicit, such as terrorist propaganda or child pornography, according to the documents. For several days in August, however, Sandvine's "deep packet inspection" equipment played a central role in censoring social media, news and messaging platforms used by protesters rallying against President Alexander Lukashenko's re-election, Bloomberg reported last month. On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany called the Aug. 9 election "fraudulent." The documents and product demonstration, as recounted by the people familiar with the company's affairs, lend added insight into Sandvine's work in Belarus, showing that company representatives met directly with officials in Belarus and later shipped the equipment, via a contractor, to be installed at data centers in Minsk. Sandvine declined to comment. A company spokesman had previously directed a Bloomberg reporter to its corporate ethics policy, which says that a committee reviews sales to determine the risk of its products being used in a manner "detrimental to human rights." During a Sandvine conference call on Thursday, which sought to address employee concerns about its work in Belarus, executives said they had been working with a government organization in the country for more than a year. Sandvine had provided Belarus with technology that is filtering about 40% of all internet traffic moving in and out of the country, the executives said. They said the work didn't violate U.S. sanctions. A recording of the call was shared with Bloomberg. Alexander Havang, Sandvine's chief technology officer, acknowledged during the call that Belarus may be using the company's equipment to block websites and messaging apps, but he said that Sandvine had concluded that the internet, and access to specific material on websites, wasn't "a part of human rights."

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Le 2020-09-13


  Slashdot - Wildlife In 'Catastrophic Decline' Due To Human Destruction, Scientists Warn
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Wildlife populations have fallen by more than two-thirds in less than 50 years, according to a major report (PDF) by the conservation group WWF. The report says this "catastrophic decline" shows no sign of slowing. And it warns that nature is being destroyed by humans at a rate never seen before. The report looked at thousands of different wildlife species monitored by conservation scientists in habitats across the world. They recorded an average 68% fall in more than 20,000 populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish since 1970. Measuring the variety of all life on Earth is complex, with a number of different measures. Taken together, they provide evidence that biodiversity is being destroyed at a rate unprecedented in human history. This particular report uses an index of whether populations of wildlife are going up or down. It does not tell us the number of species lost, or extinctions. The largest declines are in tropical areas. The drop of 94% for Latin America and the Caribbean is the largest anywhere in the world, driven by a cocktail of threats to reptiles, amphibians and birds. Research published in the journal Nature suggests that to turn the tide we must transform the way we produce and consume food, including reducing food waste and eating food with a lower environmental impact.

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Le 2020-09-13


  Slashdot - The Pringles Tube Is Being Redesigned Because It's a 'Recycling Nightmare'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The distinctive Pringles tube is being re-designed after criticism that it's almost impossible to recycle. The current container for the potato-based snack was condemned as a recycler's nightmare. It's a complex construction with a metal base, plastic cap, metal tear-off lid, and foil-lined cardboard sleeve. The Recycling Association dubbed it the number one recycling villain -- along with the Lucozade Sports bottle. Now Pringles' maker Kellogg's is trialling a simpler can -- although experts say it's not a full solution. The existing version is particularly troublesome because it combines so many different materials Some 90% of the new can is paper. Around 10% is a polyal (plastic) barrier that seals the interior to protect the food against oxygen and moisture which would damage the taste. But how about the lid? Well, two options are on trial in some Tesco stores -- a recyclable plastic lid and a recyclable paper lid. Kellogg's says these lids will still produce the distinctive "pop" associated with the product. [Simon Ellin from the Recycling Association] said the polyal-coated card might be recyclable but the product would need to be tested in recycling mills. And what of the much-criticised Lucozade Sports bottle? Mr Ellin said its unchanged basic design was still a big problem, as machines found it hard to differentiate the plastic in the bottle and the plastic that makes up its outer sleeve. He called on the makers, Suntory, to reduce the size of the external sleeve, as it has with the new Ribena bottle.

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Le 2020-09-12


  Slashdot - MIT Sleep Monitor Can Track People's Sleeping Positions Using Radio Signals
A team of MIT researchers has developed a device that can monitor people's sleep postures without having to use cameras or to stick sensors on their body. Engadget reports: It's a wall-mounted monitor the team dubbed BodyCompass, and it works by analyzing radio signals as they bounce off objects in a room. As the researchers explained, a device that can monitor sleep postures has many potential uses. It could be used to track the progression of Parkinson's disease, for instance, since people with the condition lose their ability to turn over in bed. To differentiate between radio signals bouncing off a body and signals bouncing off random objects in a room, the system focuses on signals that bounce off a person's chest and belly. In other words, the body parts that move while breathing. It then sends those signals to the cloud, so the BodyCompass system can analyze the user's posture. The team trained their creation's neural network and tested its accuracy by gathering 200 hours of sleep data from 26 subjects who had to wear sensors on their chest and belly in the beginning. They said that after training the device on a week's worth of data, it predicted the subject's correct body posture 94 percent of the time. In the future, BodyCompass could be paired with other devices to prod sleepers to change positions, such as smart mattresses. When that happens, the device could alert people with epilepsy if they've taken a potentially fatal sleeping position, reduce sleep apnea events and notify caregivers to move immobile patients at risk of developing bedsores. It could also help everyone else get a good night's sleep, because we definitely all need it.

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Le 2020-09-12


  Slashdot - AI Ruined Chess. Now, It's Making the Game Beautiful Again
Chess has a reputation for cold logic, but Vladimir Kramnik loves the game for its beauty. "It's a kind of creation," he says. His passion for the artistry of minds clashing over the board, trading complex but elegant provocations and counters, helped him dethrone Garry Kasparov in 2000 and spend several years as world champion. Yet Kramnik, who retired from competitive chess last year, also believes his beloved game has grown less creative. From a report: He partly blames computers, whose soulless calculations have produced a vast library of openings and defenses that top-flight players know by rote. âoeFor quite a number of games on the highest level, half of the game -- sometimes a full game -- is played out of memory," Kramnik says. "You don't even play your own preparation; you play your computer's preparation." Wednesday, Kramnik presented some ideas for how to restore some of the human art to chess, with help from a counterintuitive source -- the world's most powerful chess computer. He teamed up with Alphabet artificial intelligence lab DeepMind, whose researchers challenged their superhuman game-playing software AlphaZero to learn nine variants of chess chosen to jolt players into creative new patterns. In 2017, AlphaZero showed it could teach itself to roundly beat the best computer players at either chess, Go, or the Japanese game Shogi. Kramnik says its latest results reveal beguiling new vistas of chess to be explored, if people are willing to adopt some small changes to the established rules. The project also showcased a more collaborative mode for the relationship between chess players and machines. "Chess engines were initially built to play against humans with the goal of defeating them," says Nenad Tomasev, a DeepMind researcher who worked on the project. "Now we see a system like AlphaZero used for creative exploration in tandem with humans rather than opposed to them." People have played chess for around 1,500 years, and tweaks to the rules aren't new. Nor are grumbles that computers have made the game boring.

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Le 2020-09-12


  Slashdot - Microsoft Surface Duo Review: Two Screens, Too Many Problems
Joanna Stern, reviewing the Surface Duo for the Wall Street Journal: It isn't always clear when something is ready. Take my grilling. Sometimes I remove steak well before or after I should've. You might say it's a "tough" call. But there's nothing tough about stating this: The new two-screen Surface Duo is undercooked. Microsoft's new $1,400 book-like phone-tablet thingy is not ready for me and not ready for you. Unless, of course, you want an Android device that repeatedly ignores your taps on its screens, randomly slows down, struggles to figure out its own up, down and sideways positioning, and abruptly rearranges parts of its own interface. If that is your dream, well, then it is ready. Somehow, Microsoft disagrees. "We had been testing for some time. We wanted to get it out. We thought this was the right time for us," said Matt Barlow, Microsoft's corporate vice president of modern life, search and devices. With OneNote, I've loved brainstorming and taking notes with the $100 Surface Pen (sold separately). I'd love it even more if the pen could keep up with my writing. Another performance issue. Unfortunately, key Microsoft apps like Excel and Skype haven't been optimized for two screens. Microsoft and Google are also working with third-party app developers. The Kindle app, for instance, places a page on each screen to make this one adorable little e-reader. (Or at least it should. It glitched midway through testing, but began working again later, after I complained to Microsoft.) You can also launch one app on each screen -- Edge browser on left, Word on right, for instance. One of my favorite features is App Groups, which lets you pair two apps together to simultaneously launch. I have Twitter and TikTok in one with the label, "Bad for My Brain." One screen is still better suited to many of our current needs, and that makes this wide device feel awkward more often than not.

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Le 2020-09-12


  Slashdot - UK Mathematician Wins Richest Prize in Academia For His Work On Stochastic Analysis
Lanodonal writes: A mathematician who tamed a nightmarish family of equations that behave so badly they make no sense has won the most lucrative prize in academia. Martin Hairer, an Austrian-British researcher at Imperial College London, is the winner of the 2021 Breakthrough prize for mathematics, an annual $3m award that has come to rival the Nobels in terms of kudos and prestige. Hairer landed the prize for his work on stochastic analysis, a field that describes how random effects turn the maths of things like stirring a cup of tea, the growth of a forest fire, or the spread of a water droplet that has fallen on a tissue into a fiendishly complex problem. His major work, a 180-page treatise that introduced the world to "regularity structures," so stunned his colleagues that one suggested it must have been transmitted to Hairer by a more intelligent alien civilisation. Hairer, who rents a London flat with his wife and fellow Imperial mathematician, Xue-Mei Li, heard he had won the prize in a Skype call while the UK was still in lockdown. "It was completely unexpected," he said. "I didn't think about it at all, so it was a complete shock. We couldn't go out or anything, so we celebrated at home." The award is one of several Breakthrough prizes announced each year by a foundation set up by the Israeli-Russian investor Yuri Milner and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. A committee of previous recipients chooses the winners who are all leading lights in mathematics and the sciences. Other winners announced on Thursday include a Hong Kong scientist, Dennis Lo, who was inspired by a 3D Harry Potter movie to develop a test for genetic mutations in DNA shed by unborn babies, and a team of physicists whose experiments revealed that if extra dimensions of reality exist, they are curled up smaller than a third of a hair's width.

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Le 2020-09-12


  Slashdot - It's the Biggest Job in Tech. So Why Can't They Find Anyone To Do It?
An anonymous reader shares a report: An exciting new vacancy has opened up that will likely tempt some IT leaders into freshening up their CV: the UK is recruiting a Government Chief Digital Officer (GCDO), who will be working at the highest levels of the Cabinet Office to lead the digital transformation of public services in the country. All of this and more, for 200,000 pound ($255,000) a year. The job is the biggest one in government tech so you'd expect the recruiters at the Cabinet Office to be deluged with applications from hyper-qualified aspiring GCDOs, who got tech goosebumps from just reading the role description. Yet strangely enough, the GCDO job has been open for almost a year now. "We sought out candidates for a similar role last autumn," confirmed Alex Chisholm, the chief operating officer of the civil service, as he announced the new vacancy. And indeed, a similar vacancy went live last October albeit with a slightly different name -- Government Chief Digital Information Officer (GCDIO) -- but almost exactly the same responsibilities. In both versions of the job, the successful candidate is expected to "enhance Her Majesty's government's reputation as the world's most digitally-advanced government." This includes leading the Government Digital Service (GDS), a branch of the UK Cabinet Office dedicated to the digital transformation of government, and heading the 18,000-strong Digital, Data and Technology Profession department.

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Le 2020-09-12


  Slashdot - Motorola's 5G Razr Is Better Than the Original In Almost Every Way
According to Engadget, Motorola's brand-new Razr sports an improved design, support for 5G, and corrects many of the issues the first model was notorious for. Chris Velazco writes: Motorola was always clear that the Razr is a "design-first" device, and it went to great lengths to recreate the visual vibe that its classic flip phones ran with for its first foldable. To pack some much-needed extras into this new model, though, Motorola had to make some changes: The new Razr is a little chubbier, and a features a "chin" that's a bit less prominent than the original's. Personally, these changes are enough to make the Razr just a little less visually striking, but they're worth it when you consider what Motorola could pack in here as a result. For one, Motorola squeezed a better camera into the Razr's top half. My biggest gripe with the original Razr's 16-megapixel rear shooter wasn't that it was bad, per se -- it just wasn't great compared to every other camera you'd find in a similarly priced phone. In response, Motorola chose a 48-megapixel camera for this new model, which should improve photo quality substantially. The somewhat pokey Snapdragon 710 found in the first Razr also is gone, replaced here by a more modern Snapdragon 765G and 8GB of RAM. As I said, we're not working with flagship power here, but the new Razr has everything it needs to run much more smoothly this time around. By now, it might sound like Motorola has improved this new Razr on all fronts, and that's very nearly true. There are only a few things Motorola didn't change here, like its 6.2-inch flexible internal display. It's the exact same panel they used last time, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, I was still hoping a second-gen Razr screen would run at a resolution higher than 876 x 2,142. Maybe more curious is the fact that, in the United States anyway, Motorola just plans to call this phone the "Razr," and doesn't plan to differentiate it from the Verizon-only model it released earlier this year. "[I]t's still not a flagship phone, and at $1400 we're not sure it's a great deal either," Velazco says. "But for people who want an extremely pocket-friendly foldable that's also usable while closed, Motorola just might be on the right track."

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Le 2020-09-11


  Slashdot - The Surprising Traits of Good Remote Leaders
New data shows that "the confidence, intelligence and extroversion that have long propelled ambitious workers into the executive suite are not enough online because they simply don't translate into virtual leadership," writes Arianna Cohen via the BBC. "Instead, workers who are organized, dependable and productive take the reins of virtual teams." From the report: The study, published in the Journal of Business and Psychology, tracked 220 US-based teams to see which team members emerged as leaders across in-person, virtual and hybrid groups. The researchers conducted a series of in-lab experiments with 86 four-person teams, and also traced the communications and experiences of 134 teams doing a semester-long project in a university class (students are commonly used as proxy for workers in leadership research). The study was carried out pre-pandemic, focusing on emergent leaders: those perceived as leaders, and whose influence is willingly accepted. As expected, the face-to-face teams chose leaders with the same confident, magnetic, smart-seeming extroverted traits that we often see in organizational leaders. But those chosen as remote leaders were doers, who tended towards planning, connecting teammates with help and resources, keeping an eye on upcoming tasks and, most importantly, getting things done. These leaders were goal-focused, productive, dependable and helpful. In other words, virtually, the emphasis shifts from saying to doing. This discovery is timely, as most of our workplace in-person teams are now all or partially digital operations in the wake of the pandemic.

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Le 2020-09-11


  Slashdot - Germany's Nationwide Emergency Warning Day Sees Bumpy Rollout
For those living in or visiting Germany on Thursday, things got loud this morning. At 11 a.m. sharp (0900 GMT) Germany carried out a nationwide test of its civil alarm systems -- with everything from sirens to push notifications on smartphones being tested. The test was slated to run for exactly 20 minutes. It's the first test of its kind since Germany was reunified in 1991. From a report: According to the Office for Protection and Disaster Aid (BBK), the national emergency warning day is intended to test out Germany's warning systems and prepare the public for what to do in the event of a national emergency. "On the one hand, this is about conducting a technical test of the warning systems. The other is that we want to sensitize the population with the warning day. We want to give them an understanding of what such warning signals, such as the sirens, mean," said Christoph Unger, the head of the BBK. While sirens wailed across many parts of Germany, the emergency test day saw a bumpy roll out in other areas -- particularly with more modern technology. It was the first time that nationwide emergency push notifications were due to be sent out -- but many users reported either not receiving a notification at all or getting one after a delay. "The nationwide MoWaS [Modular warning system] could only be received after a delay. The reason for this was an unscheduled simultaneous triggering of a large number of warning messages via MoWaS," the BBK wrote on Twitter The system uses a satellite system to send out warning messages to public broadcasters, news agencies, critical infrastructure companies -- and smartphone users with so-called "warning apps."

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Le 2020-09-11


  Slashdot - Now Is the Time To Bring Back Away Messages
Life is totally online -- we need ways to politely disconnect. From a report: I spend most Thursdays heads down writing. The task is one that, at least for me, requires absolute focus, a quality that I have to essentially beg some corner of my brain to extend to me for a few hours. This usually fails, making the draft take twice as long as it has to. Even now, my phone is lighting up with a text; several Twitter direct messages are awaiting my response; I have an email open in another tab that I actually want to answer. There are a number of things I could do, some of which I've suggested in other columns, like turning off notifications (off for everything but texts, at the moment) and setting an alarm that dictates when I can look at any social media (I usually do this by the hour). Both methods help, but there's a tool that, if more readily available and widely used, would make perhaps the biggest difference of all: away messages. In the glory days of online communication (2002 to 2009, in my rough, highly personal estimation), away messages were popular on AOL's instant messaging service and acted a bit like digital Post-it notes stuck to a door: messages that would pop up next to a user's handle indicating that a person was unavailable to chat. Yet they've largely fallen to the wayside, foregone in favor of constant connectivity that's distracting and stressful. If I could easily apply away messages to iMessage, Twitter, and any other form of messaging app or social network, I'd rest easy while drafting, comforted by the fact that anyone trying to reach me will know by my away message that it'll be some time before I respond. Anything that makes it easier to disconnect and focus on work will help ensure that you're able to accomplish tasks in a more efficient manner and, ideally, get done earlier. As it stands, every distraction -- a text message, checking your email, whatever -- comes at a high cost, causing you to lose time that you could have spent on getting your shit done instead. Notifications and quick message checks can be highly distracting, because it takes time for your brain to fully focus on a task.

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Le 2020-09-11


  Slashdot - GM Can Manage an EV's Batteries Wirelessly -- and Remotely
An anonymous reader quotes a report: IEEE Spectrum got an exclusive look at General Motors' wireless battery management system. It's a first in any EV anywhere (not even Tesla has one). The wireless technology, created with Analog Devices, Inc., will be standard on a full range of GM EVs, with the company aiming for at least 1 million global sales by mid-decade. Those vehicles will be powered by GM's proprietary Ultium batteries, produced at a new US $2.3 billion plant in Ohio, in partnership with South Korea's LG Chem. Unlike today's battery modules, which link up to an on-board management system through a tangle of orange wiring, GM's system features RF antennas integrated on circuit boards. The antennas allow the transfer of data via a 2.4-gigahertz wireless protocol similar to Bluetooth but with lower power. Slave modules report back to an onboard master, sending measurements of cell voltages and other data. That onboard master can also talk through the cloud to GM. The upshot is cradle-to-grave monitoring of battery health and operation, including real-time data from drivers in wildly different climates or usage cases. That all-seeing capability includes vast inventories of batteries -- even before workers install them in cars on assembly lines. GM can essentially plug-and-play battery modules for a vast range of EVs, including heavy-duty trucks and sleek performance cars, without having to redesign wiring harnesses or communications systems for each. That can help the company speed models to market and ensure the profitability that has eluded most EV makers. GM engineers and executives said they've driven the cost of Ultium batteries, with their nickel-cobalt-manganese-aluminum chemistry, below the $100 per kilowatt-hour mark -- long a Holy Grail for battery development. And GM has vowed that it will turn a profit on every Ultium-powered car it makes. The system features end-to-end encryption and the software and battery nodes can be reprogrammed over-the-air. "Repurposing partially spent batteries also gets easier because there's no need to overhaul the management system or fiddle with hard-to-recycle wiring," the report adds. "Wireless packs can go straight into their new roles, typically as load-balancing workhorses for the grid."

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Le 2020-09-11


  Slashdot - TikTok Reveals Details of How Its Algorithm Works
On a call with reporters Wednesday, TikTok executives said they were revealing details of their algorithm and data practices to dispel myths and rumors about the company. Axios reports: TikTok's algorithm uses machine learning to determine what content a user is most likely to engage with and serve them more of it, by finding videos that are similar or that are liked by people with similar user preferences. When users open TikTok for the first time, they are shown 8 popular videos featuring different trends, music, and topics. After that, the algorithm will continue to serve the user new iterations of 8 videos based on which videos the user engages with and what the user does. The algorithm identifies similar videos to those that have engaged a user based on video information, which could include details like captions, hashtags or sounds. Recommendations also take into account user device and account settings, which include data like language preference, country setting, and device type. Once TikTok collects enough data about the user, the app is able to map a user's preferences in relation to similar users and group them into "clusters." Simultaneously, it also groups videos into "clusters" based on similar themes, like "basketball" or "bunnies." Using machine learning, the algorithm serves videos to users based on their proximity to other clusters of users and content that they like. TikTok's logic aims to avoid redundancies that could bore the user, like seeing multiple videos with the same music or from the same creator. TikTok concedes that its ability to nail users' preferences so effectively means that its algorithm can produce "filter bubbles," reinforcing users' existing preferences rather than showing them more varied content, widening their horizons, or offering them opposing viewpoints. The company says that it's studying filter bubbles, including how long they last and how a user encounters them, to get better at breaking them when necessary. Since filter bubbles can reinforce conspiracy theories, hoaxes and other misinformation, TikTok's product and policy teams study which accounts and video information -- themes, hashtags, captions, and so on -- might be linked to misinformation. Videos or creators linked to misinformation are sent to the company's global content reviewers so they can be managed before they are distributed to users on the main feed, which is called the "For You" page.

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Le 2020-09-11


  Slashdot - Theranos' Holmes May Pursue 'Mental Disease' In Her Defense
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Former Theranos Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Holmes is exploring a "mental disease" defense for her criminal fraud trial, in one of Silicon Valley's most closely watched cases. That possibility was revealed Wednesday when the judge overseeing the case ruled that government prosecutors can examine Holmes. The ruling was in response to the failed blood-testing startup founder's plan to introduce evidence of "mental disease or defect" or other mental condition "bearing on the issue of guilt," according to the filing. Holmes may be seeking to introduce the evidence to challenge the requirement that prosecutors prove her intent to do something wrong or illegal. Holmes intends to use testimony from Mindy Mechanic, a clinical psychologist at California State University at Fullerton, according to the filing. Mechanic is an expert on the psychosocial consequences of trauma, with a focus on violence against women, and often provides expert testimony in cases involving "interpersonal violence," according to her faculty profile on the school's website. Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at the University of Michigan law school, said mounting a so-called insanity defense won't be easy, as the defendant must meet a high standard of proof. "Contrary to what you may see in the movies, an insanity defense in federal cases is rare and hard to fake," McQuade said in an email. Holmes must show that, at the time she committed the alleged offenses, a severe mental defect made her "unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of (her) acts." In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila rejected Holmes's argument that she shouldn't have to submit to a psychological examination by government experts. The judge ruled that such an examination is fair given Holmes's intent to use testimony from Mechanic.

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Le 2020-09-11


  Slashdot - In China, GitHub Is a Free Speech Zone for Covid Information
As coronavirus news was increasingly trapped behind the Great Firewall, the programming platform became a refuge from censorship. It may not last long. From a report: When the coronavirus first spread through China in January, Chinese PhD student Weilei Zeng watched the pandemic unfold online from his apartment in Riverside, California. Thousands of miles from home, he frantically tried to keep up with news of the crisis, following the rare outpouring of discontent that flooded Chinese social media: lockdown diaries penned by anxious patients; video footage of overcrowded hospitals; tributes to Li Wenliang, the young doctor who was reprimanded for "rumor-mongering" when he first warned the public about the virus (and would die of Covid-19 only a month later). Then, inevitably, as Chinese censors stepped in to scrub the internet clean, Zeng would return to a link he'd visited just a few days earlier to find only the familiar 404 error message -- indicating that the page had vanished. Zeng soon discovered that these posts were not gone. Many had been preserved and quietly tucked away in an unexpected corner of the internet: GitHub, the world's largest open source software site. Founded in 2008 and acquired by Microsoft in 2018, GitHub is popular among developers and programmers, who use the platform mostly to share and crowdsource code. Zeng often used it as a way to collaborate with his university peers on research projects. But after the pandemic hit, he stumbled on thousands of Chinese internet users repurposing GitHub as a Covid-19 archive, racing against censors to document the outbreak in the form of news articles, medical journals, and personal accounts. One collaborative project, known as a "repository," was named #2020nCovMemory. Founded by seven volunteers from around the world, it included everything from investigative reports published by Chinese news magazine Caixin to the diary entries of Wuhan writer Fang Fang, who criticized the local government's suppression of information and initial failure to warn the public about the virus. Another repository, called Terminus2049 -- named after a planet in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series -- collected sensitive articles that were otherwise inaccessible behind China's Great Firewall, such as an interview with Ai Fen, the doctor who first discovered the virus in December. In February, Zeng joined a repository called 2020nCov_individual_archives, to crowdsource online diary entries and citizens' accounts of everyday life during the pandemic. "It made me feel much more at peace, knowing that these stories were being saved somewhere," Zeng says. On the Chinese internet, global social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are banned, and domestic platforms like WeChat and Weibo are strictly monitored. But GitHub, known to some Chinese internet users as the "last land of free speech in China," remains accessible. Chinese authorities cannot censor individual projects, because GitHub uses the HTTPS protocol, which encrypts all traffic.

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Le 2020-09-11


  Slashdot - Android 11 Go Could Make Cheap Phones Up To 20% Faster
Following the official release of Android 11 earlier this week, Google also has some updates in store for the stripped-down version of Android designed for phones with lower specs. From a report For Android 11 (Go Edition), the most important upgrade is just generally speedier performance, with Google claiming that apps will launch 20% faster in Android 11 Go compared to Android 10 Go. Meanwhile, when it comes to messaging, Android 11 Go is also getting a dedicated section for conversations in the notification tray, so you can see all your ongoing texts in one place, regardless of the specific app. On top of that, Android 11 Go is also getting Google's gesture-based navigation just like vanilla Android 11. Instead of a row of buttons along the bottom of the screen, you can swipe up to go home, swipe in from either side to go back, or swipe up and hold to see your recently used apps. Also, with digital privacy becoming increasingly important, Google is giving Android 11 Go more granular security settings including the ability to grant apps access to hardware like cameras, microphones, or GPS on a one-time basis. And when it comes to apps you haven't used in a long time, Android 11 Go will automatically reset app permissions to prevent old settings that you've probably forgotten about from comprising your security. But perhaps the biggest change for Android 11 Go is that previously, Go Editions of Android were limited to phones with 1GB of RAM. However, with smartphone memory becoming cheaper and more accessible, Android 11 Go has been updated to support phones with up to 2GB of RAM.

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Le 2020-09-11


  Slashdot - Is Virtual Burning Man the Internet's Ultimate Test?
An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece from The New York Times, written by Neil Shister, author of "Radical Ritual: How Burning Man Changed the World." Here's an excerpt: In perhaps the ultimate test of whether the internet can satisfyingly replicate the real world, Burning Man has gone online this year. The notion isn't as much of a mismatch as it might seem. Larry Harvey, who helped start Burning Man on a San Francisco beach in 1986 and was its guiding luminary until his death in 2018, saw himself as a social engineer. He envisioned a landscape of limitless possibility where people could, at least temporarily, liberate themselves from the numbing confines of commodified art, entertainment and even lifestyle. What has more limitless possibility -- in theory, anyway -- than the internet? Indeed, a community famous for innovation (some trace the origins of maker culture to Burning Man) and deeply endowed with tech wizardry (Elon Musk famously said Burning Man "is Silicon Valley") adapted to the pandemic by creating a virtual Burning Man known as the Multiverse. The weeklong assemblage of eight digital platforms, which anyone can view free, went live at 12:01 a.m. on the last Monday in August, the traditional time Black Rock City (the name of the makeshift town where Burning Man takes place) opens its gates with a burst of fireworks. The Multiverse maintains much of the energy, abundance and wonder of the real thing. One's cursor wanders among detailed renditions of Black Rock City that, for anyone who has been there, are eerily familiar: the layout of the camps, the signature structures and the cracked desert floor. Hover over an icon on the screen and the avatar of a Burner appears playing music he or she programmed. Digital art pieces installed by Burners surface when you click on planted flags. Visitors move through the Temple, an island of spiritual contemplation amid the playa's cacophony, by connecting glowing colored orbs into meditative patterns. You can attend workshops, which often include chat rooms for serendipitous encounters. But what's missing are adequate simulations of the vulnerability, discomfort and gratitude so central to Burning Man's existential qualities. Those fabled personal transformations typically arise from reappraisals of the self-image you brought to Black Rock City. You discover more creativity, self-reliance, flexibility, generosity -- even love -- than you thought you possessed. Or less. "You don't always get the Burn you want," a playa adage goes, "but you always get the Burn you need." Black Rock City continually serves up opportunities to examine one's internal guidance system. The Multiverse doesn't offer this kind of introspection. There's no app that replicates the dread of loneliness or the relief of forgiveness -- familiar emotions at Burning Man. Which isn't to say that won't happen someday. As artificial-reality techniques advance, as the psychodynamics of cyberspace become more sophisticated in integrating the brain with virtual technology, it may one day be possible to elicit feelings associated with the self-governance, communal trust, gifting and fun that make Burning Man such a singular experience.

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Le 2020-09-10


  Slashdot - Researchers Demonstrate In-Chip Watercooling
FallOutBoyTonto shares a report from Ars Technica: Part of the problem with liquid cooling solutions is that they're limited by having to get the heat out of the chip and into the water in the first place. That's led some researchers to consider running the liquid through the chip itself. Now, some researchers from Switzerland have designed the chip and cooling system as a single unit, with on-chip liquid channels placed next to the hottest parts of the chip. The results are an impressive boost in heat-limited performance. There have been a number of demonstrations of on-chip liquid cooling. These typically involve a system where a device with a set of liquid channels is fused onto a chip, and a system pumps fluid through it. This can get heat off the chip, and initial implementations have found that there's a bit of a trade-off: it takes more power to pump the water through these channels than you extract from the processor. That power isn't used at the site where heat is an issue, so it doesn't get in the way of the heat dissipation, but it does cut into the energy efficiency of the system. The new research builds upon these ideas to boost the efficiency of on-chip cooling systems. And the researchers involved demonstrate that it works using a power-converting chip that otherwise would see the performance reduced by the heat. The research has been published in the journal Nature.

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Le 2020-09-10


  Slashdot - Vivaldi Browser Adds a Pause Button For the Internet
It can be hard to tear yourself away from the never-ending stream of content provided by the internet, so Vivaldi decided to make taking a break easier by introducing a pause button. PCMag reports: Version 3.3 of the Vivaldi browser introduces a new feature called "Break Mode." Rather than having to close your browser, Break Mode allows you to effectively pause your access to the internet with a button press. Once installed, Vivaldi 3.3 displays a pause button on the status bar. When pressed, Break Mode is engaged, which "mutes and stops HTML5 audio and videos, hides all tabs, panels, and other content leaving the screen clean." It's also possible to trigger Break Mode with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + "." and to activate it via the browser's Quick Commands. The Vivaldi team sees it as a way of allowing you to "interact with the physical world" while at the same time not having to remember which tabs you had open or what you were viewing when you're ready to return. Pressing the pause button again resumes access just as you left it. Break Mode also acts as a very simple and quick way to hide what you were doing on the internet, which could come in very handy seeing as we're spending so much more time at home together. Other new features include more options for customizing themes as well as adding a new "Private" theme, highlighting base domains to help identify malicious web pages, easier cropping of URLs in the address bar making it easier to visit different parts of a website, and enhancements to the built-in tracker and ad blocker allowing whole pages to be easily blocked.

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Le 2020-09-10


  Slashdot - Tesla Model Y Owners Find Cooling System Cobbled Together With Home Depot-Grade Fake Wood
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Drive: According to several owners of the all-new Model Y, Tesla has allegedly assembled their cars using what appears to be faux wood trim from a home improvement store. It all started with a forum post featuring a photo of a Model Y's frunk plastics removed. The original poster of the thread had reportedly spent more than ten hours disassembling their Model Y to correct poor panel fitment when they came across a large chunk of metal secured with green tape and a small strap. "Someone made a run to Home Depot to make Q2 numbers," jested the thread's original poster. Shortly after, a few other posters chimed in with photos of the same part, showing more wood grain and a few plain white mounts as well. That part you're looking at is the Model Y's Liquid Cooled Condenser (LCC). Its job is essentially that of a heat exchanger, passing refrigerant through a large block where it transfers the thermal properties of the cryogen with other parts of the cooling system. This is just one small sliver of Tesla's unique octavalve cooling system found in the Model Y that is responsible for conditioning the car's cabin, battery, and drive unit simultaneously. The trim appears to be providing some strain relief for the strap holding the LCC in place, perhaps to keep the tension from providing unnecessary stress on the condenser during vibration or flexing, or to prevent any sharp corners from severing the strap itself. However, it's worth noting that Tesla didn't always use what appears to be akin to in-home molding in this application. In fact, several videos on YouTube show vehicles fitted with a clear plastic part in place of the trim. Interestingly, Tesla's own parts catalog doesn't show the any such mounting solution found on the various Model Ys in the thread. It's not clear if the part simply isn't documented, or if it was a rapid fix that has remained in production for quite some time.

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Le 2020-09-10


  Slashdot - Ireland To Order Facebook To Stop Sending User Data To US
A European Union privacy regulator has sent Facebook a preliminary order to suspend data transfers to the U.S. about its EU users, WSJ reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter, an operational and legal challenge for the company that could set a precedent for other tech giants. From the report: The preliminary order, the people said, was sent by Ireland's Data Protection Commission to Facebook late last month, asking for the company's response. It is the first significant step EU regulators have taken to enforce a July ruling about data transfers from the bloc's top court. That ruling restricted how companies like Facebook can send personal information about Europeans to U.S. soil, because it found that Europeans have no effective way to challenge American government surveillance. To comply with Ireland's preliminary order, Facebook would likely have to re-engineer its service to silo off most data it collects from European users, or stop serving them entirely, at least temporarily. If it fails to comply with an order, Ireland's data commission has the power to fine Facebook up to 4% of its annual revenue, or $2.8 billion. Nick Clegg, Facebook's top policy and communications executive, confirmed that Ireland's privacy regulator has suggested, as part of an inquiry, that Facebook can no longer in practice conduct EU-U.S. data transfers using a widely used type of contract. "A lack of safe, secure and legal international data transfers would damage the economy and prevent the emergence of data-driven businesses from the EU, just as we seek a recovery from Covid-19," Mr. Clegg said.

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Le 2020-09-10


  Slashdot - Marc Levoy on the Balance of Camera Hardware, Software, and Artistic Expression
A major focus of any smartphone release is the camera. For a while, all eyes were on the camera's hardware -- megapixels, sensors, lenses, and so on. But since Google's Pixel was introduced, there's been a lot more interest in the camera's software and how it takes advantage of the computer it's attached to. Marc Levoy, former distinguished engineer at Google, led the team that developed computational photography technologies for the Pixel phones, including HDR+, Portrait Mode, and Night Sight, and he's responsible for a lot of that newfound focus on camera processing. An excerpt from the wide-ranging interview: Nilay Patel: When you look across the sweep of smartphone hardware, is there a particular device or style of device that you're most interested in expanding these techniques to? Is it the 96-megapixel sensors we see in some Chinese phones? Is it whatever Apple has in the next iPhone? Is there a place where you think there's yet more to be gotten? Marc Levoy: Because of the diminishing returns due to the laws of physics, I don't know that the basic sensors are that much of a draw. I don't know that going to 96 megapixels is a good idea. The signal-to-noise ratio will depend on the size of the sensor. It is more or less a question of how big a sensor can you stuff into the form factor of a mobile camera. Before, the iPhone smartphones were thicker. If we could go back to that, if that would be acceptable, then we could put larger sensors in there. Nokia experimented with that, wasn't commercially successful. Other than that, I think it's going to be hard to innovate a lot in that space. I think it will depend more on the accelerators, how much computation you can do during video or right after photographic capture. I think that's going to be a battleground. Nilay Patel:When you say 96 is a bad idea -- much like we had megahertz wars for a while, we did have a megapixel war for a minute. Then there was, I think, much more excitingly, an ISO war, where low-light photography and DSLRs got way better, and then soon, that came to smartphones. But we appear to be in some sort of megapixel count war again, especially on the Android side. When you say it's not a good idea, what makes it specifically not a good idea? Marc Levoy: As I said, the signal to noise ratio is basically a matter of the total sensor size. If you want to put 96 megapixels and you can't squeeze a larger sensor physically into the form factor of the phone, then you have to make the pixels smaller, and you end up close to the diffraction limit and those pixels end up worse. They are noisier. It's just not clear how much advantage you get. There might be a little bit more headroom there. Maybe you can do a better job of de-mosaicing -- meaning computing the red, green, blue in each pixel -- if you have more pixels, but there isn't going to be that much headroom there. Maybe the spec on the box attracts some consumers. But I think, eventually, like the megapixel war on SLRs, it will tone down, and people will realize that's not really an advantage.

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Le 2020-09-10


  Slashdot - Tesla Can Detect Aftermarket Hacks Designed To Defeat EV Performance Paywalls
As recently highlighted by a Tesla Model 3 owner on Reddit, your connected car knows when you've hacked it, and it might be logging that data to use against you in a future warranty claim. The Drive reports: The image you see above is a warning message popped up on the man's Model 3 infotainment screen after he installed the latest over-the-air OS update from Tesla a couple weeks ago. Prior to the update, he had also added an aftermarket module from an outfit called Ingenext that allows the dual-motor Model 3 to achieve its quickest 0-60 mph time without Tesla's requisite $2,000 "Acceleration Boost" option. Its presence didn't trigger a warning prior to the software update, and though the car still drove normally, the owner couldn't get the display to clear. Ingenext is a Canadian company focused on activating the latent performance and comfort features baked-in to Tesla vehicles. One particular modification developed by the company is called "Boost 50," a $1,458 upgrade which claims to shave up to a half-second off the zero-to-60 MPH time when installed in a Model 3 equipped with dual motors but not the performance option. [...] Ingenext's founder Guillaume Andre told The Drive that he feared Tesla could use the detection of aftermarket parts to justify blocking vehicles from using the Supercharger network and make customers "a prisoner of the Tesla system". The owner of the Model 3 that began getting the pop-ups told us that he planned to visit a Tesla Supercharger to ensure normal functionality, but has not yet reported the results of his findings. [...] Ingenext got to working on finding just how Tesla detected its "undetectable" mod. After some prodding, it was determined that the vehicle had used a separate communications network to detect the presence of the module and ultimately determined that a second small hardware module could be installed to combat the detection. Ingenext dubbed its fix the "Nice Try Module" and has already begun shipping it to customers. The Tesla community is torn on this matter. Some argue that owners who purchased the module knew the risk of not going through the official channels, akin to using a cheat code to unlock a DLC upgrade in a video game. Others bring up the very valid point of right to repair -- but does that also include right to modify? After all, you do own the vehicles you spent upwards of $40,000 on. Nearly every enthusiast-focused vehicle has an off-the-shelf tune of some sort that can be purchased. Ingenext says that this is only the beginning of a fight that it anticipates will be an uphill battle, if not for it, than for all aftermarket companies who develop performance mods for Teslas.

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Le 2020-09-09


  Slashdot - Tech Firms Face Growing Resentment Toward Parent Employees During COVID-19
Over time, as Silicon Valley companies had to change the way its employees work during the COVID-19 pandemic, "an undercurrent of resentment has bubbled up across the tech industry against those splitting time between work and family, and it's spilled out in public on employee message boards, company chat software and on social networks," reports CNET. From the report: At Facebook, the pushback has forced COO Sheryl Sandberg, a parent herself, to defend the company's policies. "I do believe parents have certain challenges," Sandberg said in an August meeting, according to a report in The New York Times. "But everyone has challenges, and those challenges are very, very real." Meanwhile, some employees at Apple, Facebook and Uber say they're barely making it all work. More than half of 1,000 people surveyed by Care.com said they felt like they'd let down their colleagues due to juggling children and work during the pandemic. Of the respondents to the survey, published in August, 52% said they hide their childcare issues because they worry colleagues won't understand. And 45% believe their career advancement has suffered because they're juggling work and kids at home. As the pandemic spread, many tech companies expanded policies to help parents deal with the sudden responsibility of caring for children while also working full time. Some, like Google and Microsoft, extended paid time off. Companies like Apple, Facebook and Uber also emphasized willingness to allow for more-variable work schedules. [...] Other tech firms express the same sentiments to caregiver employees and to the press. But some employees say the companies haven't successfully woven those feelings into their hard-charging cultures, which, before the pandemic, often included the expectation that people would endure long commutes to the office so they could be at their desks, working into the evening. It's led to surprising clashes within tech companies, where parent employees are learning that some managers and peers resent the benefits and flexibility parents are getting. Many parents are also reporting they need more time to finish tasks, in part because of the regular interruptions caused by children. A July survey of 1,726 active job seekers by the recruiting site ZipRecruiter found that mothers at home with school-age kids expect work hours to reduce by 9%, while fathers say they expect a drop of 5%. Taken together, these new working arrangements have led some nonparent employees to accuse the parents of being treated better by management while failing to pull their weight.

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Le 2020-09-09


  Slashdot - Windows 10 Themes Can Be Abused To Steal Windows Passwords
AmiMoJo writes: Specially crafted Windows 10 themes and theme packs can be used in 'Pass-the-Hash' attacks to steal Windows account credentials from unsuspecting users. Windows allows users to create custom themes that contain customized colors, sounds, mouse cursors, and the wallpaper that the operating system will use. Windows users can then switch between different themes as desired to change the appearance of the operating system. A theme's settings are saved under the %AppData%MicrosoftWindowsThemes folder as a file with a .theme extension, such as 'Custom Dark.theme.' Windows themes can then be shared with other users by right-clicking on an active theme and selecting 'Save theme for sharing,' which will package the theme into a '.deskthemepack' file. These desktop theme packs can then be shared via email or as downloads on websites, and installed by double-clicking them. This weekend security researcher Jimmy Bayne (@bohops) revealed that specially crafted Windows themes could be used to perform Pass-the-Hash attacks. Pass-the-Hash attacks are used to steal Windows login names and password hashes by tricking a user into accessing a remote SMB share that requires authentication. When trying to access the remote resource, Windows will automatically try to login to the remote system by sending the Windows user's login name and an NTLM hash of their password. In a Pass-the-Hash attack, the sent credentials are harvested by the attackers, who then attempt to dehash the password to access the visitors' login name and password.

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Le 2020-09-09


  Slashdot - Apple, Amazon, Google, and Zigbee Alliance Standard For Smart Home Tech On Track For 2021 Release
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Last year, Apple, Amazon, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance, which includes Ikea, Samsung, and Philips, announced a new working group known as "Project Connected Home over IP" that set about developing an IP-based open-source connectivity standard for smart home products, with a focus on increased compatibility, security, and simplified development for manufacturers. The group has today announced a major update on the project, stating that development is ongoing, and that work is on track for a 2021 release. The update reveals the first concrete information about how the open-source smart home standard will work. A large number of devices will be supported by the protocol, including "lighting and electrical (e.g., light bulbs, luminaires, controls, plugs, outlets), HVAC controls (e.g., thermostats, AC units), access control (e.g., door locks, garage doors), safety and security (e.g., sensors, detectors, security systems), window coverings/shades, TVs, access points, bridges and others," as well as additional "consumer electronics products." The announcement also reveals that the group has grown significantly, now with 145 active member companies. Between these companies there are hundreds of product, engineering, and marketing experts, working across 30 cross-functional teams to deliver the new standard. The group aims to provide a "draft specification" by the end of the year, and release the completed standard next year.

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Le 2020-09-09


  Slashdot - CBS Will Celebrate 'Star Trek' Day 2020 With an Epic Trek Panel Marathon
Iwastheone shares a report from Space.com: It's been an incredible 54 years since "Star Trek" first debuted. On Tuesday (Sept. 8), actors from across the multi-decade franchise will celebrate an online "Star Trek" day with panels and discussions, while discussing the series' emphasis on diversity. More than three hours of free virtual panels will play at the Star Trek Day website here starting at 12 p.m. PDT (3 p.m. EDT or 1900 GMT). The multi-hour online event comes in the wake of a CBS announcement Sept. 2 that "Star Trek" will feature its first nonbinary and transgender characters in Season 3 of "Star Trek: Discovery," which premieres Oct. 15. Adira will be a nonbinary character played by non-binary actor Blu del Barrio, while transgender actor Ian Alexander will play Gray. CBS All Access also pledged to donate $1 for every person who tweets the hashtag #StarTrekUnitedGives on Tuesday between 12 a.m. and 11:59 a.m. PDT (between 3 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 8 and 2:59 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9 EDT, or between 0700 Tuesday, Sept. 8 and 0659 Wednesday, Sept. 9 GMT). The donations will go to "organizations who do the real-world work of championing equality, social justice and the pursuit of scientific advancements," CBS said in a statement. The organizations include the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering and the Equal Justice Initiative. The article has included the full schedule for the event.

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Le 2020-09-09


  Slashdot - AT&T's Current 5G Is Slower Than 4G In Nearly Every City Tested By PCMag
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T smartphone users who see their network indicators switch from "4G" to "5G" shouldn't necessarily expect that they're about to get faster speeds. In PCMag's annual mobile-network testing, released today, 5G phones connected to AT&T got slower speeds than 4G phones in 21 out of 22 cities. PCMag concluded that "AT&T 5G right now appears to be essentially worthless," though AT&T's average download speed of 103.1Mbps was nearly as good as Verizon's thanks to a strong 4G performance. Of course, AT&T 5G should be faster than 4G in the long run -- this isn't another case of AT&T misleadingly labeling its 4G network as a type of 5G. Instead, the disappointing result on PCMag's test has to do with how today's 5G phones work and with how AT&T allocates spectrum. The counterintuitive result doesn't reveal much about the actual differences between 4G and 5G technology. Instead, it's reflective of how AT&T has used its spectrum to deploy 5G so far. As PCMag explained, "AT&T's 5G slices off a narrow bit of the old 850MHz cellular band and assigns it to 5G, to give phones a valid 5G icon without increasing performance. And because of the way current 5G phones work, it often reduces performance. AT&T's 4G network benefits from the aggregation of channels from different frequencies. "The most recent phones are able to assemble up to seven of them -- that's called seven-carrier aggregation, and it's why AT&T won [the PCMag tests] last year," the article said. 5G phones can't handle that yet, PCMag analyst Sascha Segan wrote: "But 5G phones can't add as many 4G channels to a 5G channel. So if they're in 5G mode, they're giving up 4G channels so they can use that extremely narrow, often 5MHz 5G channel, and the result is slower performance: faux G. For AT&T, using a 5G phone in testing was often a step backward from our 4G-only phone."

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Le 2020-09-09


  Slashdot - The 'Brushing' Scam That's Behind Mystery Parcels
If you've ever received a parcel from a shopping platform that you didn't order, and nobody you know seems to have bought it for you, you might have been caught up in a "brushing" scam. From a report: It has hit the headlines after thousands of Americans received unsolicited packets of seeds in the mail, but it is not new. It's an illicit way for sellers to get reviews for their products. And it doesn't mean your account has been hacked. Here's an example of how it works: let's say I set myself up as a seller on Amazon, for my product, Kleinman Candles, which cost $3 each. I then set up a load of fake accounts, and I find random names and addresses either from publicly available information or from a leaked database that's doing the rounds from a previous data breach. I order Kleinman Candles from my fake accounts and have them delivered to the addresses I have found, with no information about where they have been sent from. I then leave positive reviews for Kleinman Candles from each fake account -- which has genuinely made a purchase. This way my candle shop page gets filled with glowing reviews (sorry), my sales figures give me an algorithmic popularity boost as a credible merchant -- and nobody knows that the only person buying and reviewing my candles is myself. It tends to happen with low-cost products, including cheap electronics. It's more a case of fake marketing than cyber-crime, but "brushing" and fake reviews are against Amazon's policies. Campaign group Which? advises that you inform the platform they are sent by of any unsolicited goods.

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Le 2020-09-08


  Slashdot - One of Quantum Physics' Greatest Paradoxes May Have Lost Its Leading Explanation
fahrbot-bot writes: It's one of the oddest tenets of quantum theory: a particle can be in two places at once -- yet we only ever see it here or there. Textbooks state that the act of observing the particle "collapses" it, such that it appears at random in only one of its two locations. But physicists quarrel over why that would happen, if indeed it does. Now, one of the most plausible mechanisms for quantum collapse -- gravity -- has suffered a setback. The gravity hypothesis traces its origins to Hungarian physicists Karolyhazy Frigyes in the 1960s and Lajos Diosi in the 1980s. The basic idea is that the gravitational field of any object stands outside quantum theory. It resists being placed into awkward combinations, or "superpositions," of different states. So if a particle is made to be both here and there, its gravitational field tries to do the same -- but the field cannot endure the tension for long; it collapses and takes the particle with it. Still, the hypothesis seemed impossible to probe with any realistic technology, notes Diosi, now at the Wigner Research Center, and a co-author on the new paper. "For 30 years, I had been always criticized in my country that I speculated on something which was totally untestable." New methods now make this doable. In the new study, Diosi and other scientists looked for one of the many ways, whether by gravity or some other mechanism, that a quantum collapse would reveal itself: A particle that collapses would swerve randomly, heating up the system of which it is part. "It is as if you gave a kick to a particle," says co-author Sandro Donadi of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. If the particle is charged, it will emit a photon of radiation as it swerves. And multiple particles subject to the same gravitational lurch will emit in unison. "You have an amplified effect," says co-author Catalina Curceanu of National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Rome.

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Le 2020-09-08


  Slashdot - Qualcomm's Founder On Why the US Doesn't Have Its Own Huawei
Wired has interviewed Irwin Jacobs, a founder of Qualcomm. They talk about a wide-range of topics. Here's an excerpt that addresses Chinese tech giant Huawei's growth globally: At first, Qualcomm manufactured its own phone headsets, selling them in Asia. That was around the time it went public in 1991. Eventually, though, it sold off those parts of the business and became strictly an under-the-hood company. This decision wound up having implications in the current competition between the US and China, particularly with the telecom giant Huawei. Because of security concerns, the US is currently doing all it can to stifle adoption of Huawei's products. All of this might be easier if there were an American equivalent to Huawei -- a company working to pioneer the infrastructure of the next generation of wireless that also sold products directly to people. (In this case, that next generation is the much anticipated 5G standard.) Why didn't Qualcomm pursue that? "We did think about that, but we wanted CDMA to go worldwide," says Jacobs. He says that Qualcomm was still fighting its Holy War, trying to get CDMA accepted everywhere. Being a competitor to carriers would impede that. In 1993, the strategy paid off, when CDMA became the wireless standard. Jacobs says he thought that other US companies, like Motorola, would stay in the business. But one by one, they either shut down or sold out to foreign companies. Qualcomm, by selling companies a comprehensive chipset that could power a cellphone, actually made it easier for new Chinese competitors to hit the market, because they had the tools to create a product instantly. "Unfortunately," he says, "nobody in the US has really run with it" and done the same thing. Another complicating factor is that governments in China and Europe have had industrial aid policies that helped their telecom firms in a way that the US has not. "Our government has not provided R&D support or other support that Huawei and ZTE (another successful Chinese firm) managed to get from their own government," Jacobs says.

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Le 2020-09-08


  Slashdot - How App Developers Manipulate Your Mood To Boost Ranking?
Higher ratings are the 'lifeblood' of the smartphone app world but what if they are inflated? From a report: Rating an iPhone app takes just a second, maybe two. "Enjoying Skype?" a prompt will ask, and you click on a 1-5 star rating. Millions of people respond to these requests, giving little thought to their fleeting whim. Behind the scenes, though, an entire industry has spent countless hours and lines of code to craft this moment. The prompt, seemingly random, can be orchestrated to hit your glowing screen only at times when you are most likely to leave a five star review. Gaming apps will solicit a rating just after you reach a high score. Banking apps will ask when they know it's payday. Gambling apps will prompt users after they are dealt the perfect Blackjack hand. A sporting app will give the nudge only when a user's team is winning. Apple has for a decade clamped down on "ratings farms" and "download bots" that companies use to fraudulently garner five-star scores and manipulate App Store rankings. And it has had some success. But these are blunt instruments trying to cheat the system in clear violation of Apple's rules. The more sophisticated techniques stay within the rules but draw on behavioural psychology to understand your mood, emotions and behaviour -- they are not hacking the system; they are hacking your brain. "The algorithms that are used are very hush-hush," says Saoud Khalifah, chief executive of Fakespot, a service that analyses the authenticity of reviews on the web. "They can target you when you are euphoric, when you have a lot of dopamine. They can use machine learning to determine [when] a user will be more inclined to leave positive reviews."

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Le 2020-09-08


  Slashdot - The 61 Books Elon Musk Has Recommended on Twitter
Entrepreneur magazine writes: Although his days are presumably filled with Tesla, SpaceX, cyber pigs and lots and lots of tweeting, it seems Elon Musk also finds the time to make reading part of his routine. The billionaire businessman is known for sharing (and oversharing) all his recommendations and thoughts on Twitter, so it's no surprise that books are part of that. Most Recommended Books compiled a list of all the books Musk has commented on in the past several years, and you can see all 61 here. But if you're short on time today, click through to see 11 of the most interesting picks from his list. The list includes Peter Thiel's 2014 best-seller Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, as well as business magnate Richard Branson's 2011 book Screw Business As Usual. Musk also calls a 2004 biography of Howard Hughes "a cautionary tale," and a 2005 biography of Stalin "One of the few books so dark I had to stop reading." And for a 2011 biography of Catherine the Great, he wrote "I know what you're probably thinking ... did she really f* a horse?" His favorite books about space include John Drury Clark's Ignition! as well as Modern Engineering for Design of Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines. But there's also Robert A. Heinlein's science fiction novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. ("My favorite spaceship ever is in [this book].") And he calls Isaac Asimov's Foundation series "fundamental to [the] creation of SpaceX." Also on the list is Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (which Bill Gates also named as one of his 10 favorite books about technology) as well as Frank Herbert's Dune, which Musk calls "Brilliant," while noting that Herbert "advocates placing limits on machine intelligence." In fact, for eight different books on the list he'd added the same cautionary warning: "Hopefully not too optimistic about AI." He also says he read Karl Marx's Das Kapital at the age of 14, and also read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (which Musk called "a counterpoint to communism and useful as such, but should be tempered with kindness.") But Musk says his favorite book ever is J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

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Le 2020-09-08


  Slashdot - Is Canada About to Crack Down on Google and Facebook?
The Minister of Canadian heritage has a message for Google and Facebook, reports the Toronto Star: "The Canadian government stands with our Australian partners and denounces any form of threats," Steven Guilbeault said in an emailed statement to the Star's Susan Delacourt. The "threats" Guilbeault referred to involved some of the world's richest and most influential corporations, Facebook and Google, which have separately warned Canada's friends down under that they will suspend services in Australia or block media organizations from using their platforms if Canberra follows through with a law they don't like. That law would force these giants of the digital age — companies that rake in tens of billions of dollars each year and control the infrastructure of the internet's most-trafficked venues — to negotiate payments to the journalism organizations that create the news content hosted on their platforms... Google did not respond to a request for comment from the Star this week. Facebook, however, signalled in a background conversation with the Star that it is willing to pay more taxes in Canada. But taxation isn't the only government intervention that companies might face, according to Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa professor and Canada Research Chair in internet and E-Commerce Law: The second area where Geist sees potential for federal action is in response to calls for foreign digital players to pay for Canadian content. Here, Geist said "it's pretty clear (the government is) going to do something," given how Trudeau assigned Guilbeault to bring in legislation to modernize Canada's laws on broadcasting and telecommunications before the end of the year. In his office's statement to the Star, Guilbeault said the government is committed to a "more equitable digital regulatory framework" in Canada. "It is about levelling the playing field," he said. "Those who benefit from the Canadian ecosystem must also contribute to it, through the Canadian broadcasting sector or the fair remuneration for the use of news content."

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Le 2020-09-08


  Slashdot - Researchers Use Supercomputer to Design New Molecule That Captures Solar Energy
Iwastheone shares some news from Sweden's Linköping University: The Earth receives many times more energy from the sun than we humans can use. This energy is absorbed by solar energy facilities, but one of the challenges of solar energy is to store it efficiently, such that the energy is available when the sun is not shining. This led scientists at Linköping University to investigate the possibility of capturing and storing solar energy in a new molecule. "Our molecule can take on two different forms: a parent form that can absorb energy from sunlight, and an alternative form in which the structure of the parent form has been changed and become much more energy-rich, while remaining stable. This makes it possible to store the energy in sunlight in the molecule efficiently", says Bo Durbeej, professor of computational physics in the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology at LinkÃping University, and leader of the study... It's common in research that experiments are done first and theoretical work subsequently confirms the experimental results, but in this case the procedure was reversed. Bo Durbeej and his group work in theoretical chemistry, and conduct calculations and simulations of chemical reactions. This involves advanced computer simulations, which are performed on supercomputers at the National Supercomputer Centre, NSC, in Linköping. The calculations showed that the molecule the researchers had developed would undergo the chemical reaction they required, and that it would take place extremely fast, within 200 femtoseconds. Their colleagues at the Research Centre for Natural Sciences in Hungary were then able to build the molecule, and perform experiments that confirmed the theoretical prediction... "Most chemical reactions start in a condition where a molecule has high energy and subsequently passes to one with a low energy. Here, we do the opposite — a molecule that has low energy becomes one with high energy. We would expect this to be difficult, but we have shown that it is possible for such a reaction to take place both rapidly and efficiently", says Bo Durbeej. The researchers will now examine how the stored energy can be released from the energy-rich form of the molecule in the best way...

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Le 2020-09-08


  Slashdot - Former Mentor Says Mark Zuckerberg Intoxicated by Power, Calls Disinformation 'A National Security Issue'
MSNBC's Ali Velshi interviewed Mark Zuckerberg mentor (and early investor) Roger McNamee for a special report on "the disinformation epidemic." McNamee — also the author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe — says Zuckerberg is too focused on "imposing his vision" to acknowledge the website's threat to national security, adding "It's about power." Ali Velshi: The fact that rumor, innuendo, conspiracies, outright lies are amplified by social media is no accident. That is a feature built into platforms like Twitter and Facebook. It is part of their business model. Long before the election of 2016, Facebook knew all of this to be true, but it followed a familiar pattern of responses. It denied that was a problem. When it acknowledged the problem, it treated it as a public relations issue, not as a core business issue. It offered up half-baked solutions that changed nothing, and it fought off attempts to regulate it. Because what Facebook has created is immensely profitable... Roger McNamee says he warned Mark Zuckerberg of the immense problems that Facebook's business model could unleash... Roger McNamee: The company essentially believes that it is sovereign, the equivalent of another nation. It has nearly twice as many monthly active users as there are people in China. And so Mark Zuckerberg very much has the view that no one can tell him what to do... Facebook's own research says that 64% of the time that a person joins an extremist network on Facebook, it is because Facebook has recommended that they do so... People sit there and assume it's about money, and I think money is secondary. I really think it's about power. I think Mark Zuckerberg has a vision that connecting all the people in the world on one network — his network — is the best thing any human being can do. And in his notion it has to do with efficiency, it has to do with scale, it has to do with imposing his vision on it. And that kind of power is intoxicating. Remember, between when the company went public and 2018, the company got very little pushback — in fact what it really got was tons of love from investors and journalists and the like. And they were in their own filter bubble and started to believe their own press and their own point of view about what was going on. And I just think they're at this point now where they are just disconnected, there's really no sensitivity, no understanding that they might have a responsibility to society. And at this point, with the election coming so closely, this has become a national security issue, because effectively the platform can be used by anybody. These advertising tools can be used by campaigns, they can be used by foreign governments, they can be used by provocateurs, people who would like to make trouble. That happens every single day, and from Facebook's point of view, that's just business as usual. They want to hide behind the first amendment. They want to say this is about freedom of speech. But amplification is not freedom of speech. Amplification is a business choice for profit.

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Le 2020-09-07


  Slashdot - Is Hot Asphalt Really Increasing Air Pollution?
A new article examines a study which suggested fresh asphalt is "a significant, yet overlooked, source of air pollution," (as reported by Science). "In fact, the material's contribution to one kind of particulate air pollution could rival or even exceed that of cars and trucks." UPI reports: And its emissions double as its temperature increases from 104 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, researchers found. Sunlight plays a key role in these asphalt emissions, with even moderate levels of sunshine tripling the release of air pollutants, according to the study published Sept. 2 in the journal Science Advances... In-use pavement usually gets as hot as between 117 and 153 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, while roofs can reach 167 degrees, the study authors said. As the major contributors to air pollution get cut back — for example, through cleaner vehicle emissions — passive pollution sources like these will have a growing influence on the air we breathe, said Peter DeCarlo, an associate professor and air pollution expert with Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore. "In doing that reduction, we are discovering these new sources that are now playing a more prominent role in our air pollution issues," DeCarlo said.... Asphalt probably contributes most to air pollution when it's freshly laid, DeCarlo added. During the paving process, asphalt is heated to as much as 248 to 320 degrees Fahrenheit, the researchers said. "If you've ever been around people laying asphalt, you smell it. It's clear something is getting into the air when that happens," DeCarlo said. But asphalt likely continues to emit air pollutants even after it's aged, when sunlight bakes the material, he noted. Switching to concrete for paving would help reduce emissions, he said, but concrete is not an ideal paving material in all locales. Another possible solution might be the application of "cool pavement" technology, where colored sealants are applied to paved surfaces so they reflect more solar energy and become less likely to heat up, Gentner said. Emissions might also vary with different asphalt application methods and different formulations of the paving product, Gentner suggested.

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Le 2020-09-07


  Slashdot - Do Movie Ratings on 'Rotten Tomatoes' Really Affect a Movie's Box Office?
Either Rotten Tomatoes was destroying the film industry, or it didn't matter much at all, writes The Ringer, noting competing storylines about the influence of the film review-aggregating web site. But they've now performed a statistical deep dive to try to answer the question, and concluded that "The truth likely lies in the middle: Rotten Tomatoes wasn't tanking the industry or single-handedly exposing that Baywatch was bad, but it wasn't irrelevant, either." In fact, our analysis reveals that Rotten Tomatoes scores are reliably correlated with box office performance, especially for certain genres. But the aggregator's influence may have been on the wane before the coronavirus struck, and it may matter less than ever in the present uncertain circumstances... Our first finding is that the average Rotten Tomatoes critic score has increased over time. Maybe movies have improved — or at least grown closer to critics' liking — or maybe the rise reflects changes in the makeup of Rotten Tomatoes' pool of reviewers... Whatever the reason(s) for the increasing scores, there's no evidence of greater negativity that could be turning off ticket buyers (which probably doesn't displease Fandango). The site bestows a "Fresh" rating on any movie with a 60 percent score or higher, and the average movie now clears that threshold.... Action movie earnings are the least closely associated with review scores, maybe because when people just want to see stuff blow up, they're willing to lower their standards in certain respects. Comedies and horror movies — particularly the latter — are far more consistent with the critical consensus. A perfectly scored action movie's earnings might double its budget, but a perfectly scored comedy can quadruple its budget, while a perfectly scored horror flick can beat its budget by 10 or 20 times... The mystery of most interest to studio execs is whether Rotten Tomatoes has strengthened the relationship between the critical consensus and box office performance, which also existed in the pre-internet age. The evidence suggests that the studios were a tad too intimidated in 2017... However, there are some signs that increased attention to the critical consensus may have affected whether movies' earnings got out to fast or slow starts, even if it didn't dramatically lower or raise their final ticket tallies.

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Le 2020-09-07


  Slashdot - California Amends Freelancer Law, But Still Pursues Gig-Worker Companies and Food-Delivery Services
"California is exempting about two-dozen more professions from a landmark labor law designed to treat more people like employees instead of contractors, under a bill that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on Friday," reports the San Diego Union-Tribune: The amendments, which take effect immediately, end what lawmakers said were unworkable limits on services provided by freelance writers and still photographers, photojournalists, and freelance editors and newspaper cartoonists. It includes safeguards to make sure they are not replacing current employees. The new measure also exempts various artists and musicians, along with some involved in the insurance and real estate industries. Vox Media had already cited the earlier version of California's AB-5 law as the reason it fired hundreds of freelance writers in December. But the state's fight against gig-worker companies is still ongoing, reports CNN Wire: According to William B. Gould IV, a law professor at Stanford University, it "certainly makes a lot of sense for the Attorney General to put a lot of their marbles in the Uber basket. You're dealing with a company that has thumbed its nose at the rule of law for some time now and thinks there's no restriction that they can't evade," added Gould IV, a former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. Jenny Montoya Tansey, policy director at the Public Rights Project, a public interest legal nonprofit that has been involved with enforcement efforts in California, said another factor is that "drivers have organized in numbers and are doing a really compelling job in getting their stories out, letting regulators, enforcers and policy makers understand some of the experiences that drivers go through." And Tansey adds that the law's enforcers are also eyeing food delivery services: Prior to AB-5, San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott filed a suit against Instacart, the on-demand grocery delivery startup valued at $14 billion, over worker classification; the case is on-going. More recently, in June, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin filed a suit against DoorDash, the food delivery startup valued at $16 billion. "Food delivery is in demand now more than ever. Multi-billion dollar corporations that deliver food are profiting off this crisis while they exploit their drivers and deny them a living wage, unemployment insurance, sick leave and other basic workplace protections," said Assemblywoman Gonzalez of San Diego in a statement to CNN Business, adding praise to Elliott and Boudin's actions. "I hope other officials follow their lead. These companies need to be held to the same standards as any other law-abiding business in the state," Gonzalez added.... The threat to the combined on-demand business model is evident. Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash and Uber-owned Postmates have funneled more than $110 million into passing a referendum in November, known as Prop 22, that would exempt them from the law while providing drivers with some additional benefits. Additionally, Uber and Lyft are facing lawsuits from California's Labor Commissioner's Office over allegedly committing wage theft by misclassifying their on-demand workers as independent contractors instead of employees.

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Le 2020-09-07


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